A light buttery risotto is the ideal autumnal dish, especially when flavoured with pumpkin or squash. The Hallowe’en pumpkins, the most commonly available, are not that good to eat, because they have little taste. I use the long, trumpet-shaped Cyprus pumpkin, the sweet dumpling squash, the butternut or the onion squash.
But best for the risotto is a large, squat pumpkin with tough green rind and bright orange pulp. This pumpkin is similar to the zucca Mantovana, Mantua and its neighbouring countryside being the motherland of pumpkins and pumpkin recipes, such as this risotto.
It is quite difficult to choose a good squash or pumpkin. The fruit should be ripe, yet not old, heavy for its size, with a green stem showing no blackening at the foot.
The rind should be hard with a bright colour, either yellow, green or mottled, depending on the variety, without any blemish, soft spots or dried ridges. It is easier to buy pieces so that you can see and even taste the inside, which should be bright in colour and thick.
Pumpkins and squashes have a sweet, hard-to-capture flavour. When they are good, the flavour comes to life in a risotto such as this. For me it is one of the best dishes of the Lombard tradition, as here, in my mother’s recipe.
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In it, I give the quantity of the cleaned pumpkin because some, such as the trumpet-shaped one, have hardly any seeds and cottony pulp, while others have a lot of waste.
INGREDIENTS
Serves 8
Prep 15min
Cook 40min
700g pumpkin, rindless and cleaned
2.5 litres home-made meat or chicken stock
90g unsalted butter
8 shallots, very finely chopped
Sea salt
1tsp sugar
1 large bunch of flat-leaf parsley
600g Italian risotto rice
Ground black pepper
150ml double cream
90g grated parmesan
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METHOD
Cut the cleaned and prepared pumpkin into 1 cm cubes. Heat the stock to simmering point. Heat the butter and the shallots in a large, heavy saucepan and add 1 tsp of salt, which will help the onion to soften without browning, and the sugar. Cook for 5 min. Chop the parsley, add half of it to the pan, cooking for a further 5 min. Stir frequently.
Add the pumpkin and cook until just tender. I cannot give an exact time because it depends on which variety of pumpkin or squash you are using. Some take 5 to 10 min, others 20 min, in which case you will have to add a ladle of hot stock to the pan.
When the pumpkin is tender right through when pricked, stir in the rice and sauté for 1 or 2 min until the grains are well coated in the butter. Pour over about 450ml of simmering stock and stir thoroughly.
Bring the liquid to a lively boil, turn off the heat and cover the pan tightly. You can now leave the rice, and return to the kitchen a quarter of an hour before you want to serve dinner.
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Bring the broth back to simmering point. Add a knob of butter to the rice, which will have absorbed all the broth and be half cooked. Mix two ladles of hot broth into the rice and continue cooking, gradually adding a ladle of broth at a time until the rice is ready. If you finish the broth before the rice is cooked, add boiling water. This risotto should be more creamy and runny than other risottos.
Season with pepper and check the salt.Add the cream and half the parmesan. Turn the heat off and leave for a minute for the cheese to melt and the flavours to blend.
Stir the risotto vigorously and heap it on a heated round dish. Sprinkle the remaining parsley all over the steaming, golden mound and serve at once, handing around the remaining cheese separately in a bowl.
All recipes are from Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes: The Best of Anna Del Conte, published by Vintage at £12. Available from BooksFirst for £10.80, including p&p, 0870 1608080.