Creamy Veg Risotto is an excellent dinner recipe, a perfect blend of mushrooms and vegetables with mild flavourful spices. Traditionally, Arborio rice is used for risotto but you can use other short or long grain rice. In the below recipe I used basmati rice and it worked out very well. The trick to get your risotto creamy is to keep stirring, this makes it release starch resulting in a thick creamy risotto. Also, adding milk, cream and blend few hard cheeses adds an amazing flavour to the whole experience. To make it cook quickly I washed and soaked basmati rice in some water for about an hour, soaked rice cooks much faster (in about 15 mins) and you get to see longer grain. I also like fragrant rice so I added one black cardamom and a star anise. In addition to this, I used ghee instead of butter because I was making it with basmati rice, ghee along with spices enhances the fragrance in basmati altogether.An important step is to prepare stock water in advance as we need to add water gradually while constantly stirring the risotto. You can use any flavour of stock you like, as in chicken, mushroom or just vegetable stock. I am using chicken stock cube (in 3 glasses of hot water) here, they are much handy to use and store. So let's get started.
Equipment
- deep pan
- spatula
Ingredients
- 1 green zucchini finely chopped
- 1 small bunch of enoki mushrooms stem removed, chopped
- 1/2 cup carrot finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1/2 onion finely chopped
- 1 stock cube
- 1 cup basmati rice (washed and soaked in water)
- 2 tbsp ghee/butter
- 1/2 cup full fat milk
- 1 cup grated parmesan
- 1 tbsp crushed black pepper
- 1 star anise
- 1 black cardamom
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Heat ghee/butter in a deep pan and stir fry cardamom, star anise and garlic until golden, then add chopped onion, fry till transparent. All at medium flame.
- Add zucchini, carrot and mushrooms, some salt and cover and cook till vegetables loose moisture, stir once or twice in between.
- Now drain water from soaked rice and add rice into pan, sprinkle some salt over it and mix well and stir for 3-4 mins.
- Now start adding stock water, one or two ladles at a time, keep stirring slowly. Change the flame from medium to low.
- Cover and cook for 1-2 min, add 1-2 ladles of water and stir again, keep repeating these steps until rice is almost cooked, it will take about 12-15 mins. You will see rice soaking up stock water and releasing starch.
- Check by mashing a grain or two between your fingers, it shouldn't be chewy or hard in the centre.
- At this point add milk and keep stirring slowly until you see a creamy texture. It may take about 5-6 mins. Keep the flame low. The milk makes it rich in texture.
- Once done, switch off the heat and mix up parmesan cheese into the risotto, top with crushed black pepper and serve hot.