April 28th, 2009

risotto.pigro.con.carciofini.e.zenzero

I love a proper risotto, but these days I have been coding and editing website that I just couldn’t spend 40 minutes stirring risotto, instead, I made a lazy one (pigro means lazy in italian :) I had this wonderful bag of bio dynamic rice from Cascine Orsine and some carciofini (small artichokes) and I remember the mother of Gerardo told me about making artichoke with ginger. Never crossed my mind before that ginger and artichokes would match but they tasted fantastic! I hope my friend T will not read this post, because he wanted so much to eat artichoke last week when he was in Milan, but the thing is we did not have time to hunt down some nice artichokes, and I did not have time to cook for him either :P

Risotto Pigro con Carciofini e Zenzero - Lazy Risotto with Artichokes and Ginger

For 2

Cooking soundtrack: Peter, Bjorn and John’s Living Thing :)

100g risotto rice

0,5l water

2 cloves of garlic, peel

1 stalk of celery, finely chopped

1 cm of ginger, peel

10-12 small artichokes

Sea salt and pepper

Some dried cherry tomatoes (optional)

A knob of butter

Some freshly grated parmesan

Extra virgin olive oil

Add the rice, one garlic and the celery and water in a sauce pan and bring to boil for 30 minutes, or until the rice is cooked.

In the meantime, wash the artichokes and remove and discard the first three layers, then cut into 4, vertically (as shown above) and put into water with lemon juice (so that the artichokes do not change colour)

Heat 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a sauce pan with medium heat, add the garlic and ginger and fry until a little brown, add the artichokes and fry for 2-3 minutes and add abit of water and close. Leave for about 10 minutes, check occasionally. Soak the dried cherry tomatoes in water for 3 minutes, then drain and pat dry and cut into thin stripes.

When the rice is almost cooked, add a knob of butter, a handful of grated parmesan, stir well. Turn off the heat and leave covered.

Check if the artichokes are soft enough then season with sea salt and pepper.

Divide the risotto on the serving plates, add the artichokes on top, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, grated parmesan and dried tomatoes.

Buon apetito!

Filed under: food