Once again we’re visiting Italy for the blog, so I had to make one of my favorites: risotto. I make this so often I have my own recipe, so I’ll be posting a full recipe for the first time! It was also time to use up some tahini I had in the fridge, so I made chocolate tahini cookies and had absolutely no idea what to expect.
Local Fare
Risotto time!! Honestly I’ll take any excuse to make risotto and it’s been cold enough that it seemed like the perfect meal this week. I’m going to do my best to write out an actual recipe this time too.
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Ingredients
1 cup Arborio rice
4 cups stock, chicken or vegetable
1/2 cup red wine
1 T olive oil
1/2 cup peas
2 T vegan butter, to finish
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (if you can eat it)
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional: 1/2 small onion and 2 cloves of garlic, diced, and extra 1 T olive oil
Directions
- Warm the stock over low heat. While stock warms, heat a large skillet over medium-low heat and dice onion and garlic.
- Add olive oil to the pan and sauté onions and garlic for a few minutes until translucent. Then add Arborio rice and stir to coat the rice with oil. Cook for another minute.
- Add wine to the pan and stir while rice absorbs the wine.
- Once wine is absorbed, add the stock a single ladle-full at a time, stirring constantly. Allow the rice to cook and absorb all the stock before adding the next ladle. This will give you the creamy texture you want in a risotto!
- Continue adding stock until the rice reaches the slightly chewy texture you want in a risotto. It should have a bit of bite. Usually I have some stock left over. With the last ladle of stock, add in the peas and the vegan butter. Also add salt and pepper to taste.
- Once the risotto is done cooking, remove from heat and stir in the cheese. If you don’t care for blue cheese, you can add the more traditional Parmesan cheese. We love the red wine-blue cheese combo in our house though!
And that is it! We ate this while watching Rome and I love when we get the chance to do this. Everyone gobbled it up, even the tiny human who has refused risotto in the past. Clearly I just needed to add more cheese.
DW: I love this rich and filling risotto! It’s really hard to go wrong with Italian, isn’t it? Two thumbs up.
Liz-friendly Fare
LW: I’m going to be honest here—I was not sure how the second recipe would work out. Tahini cookies seemed like a bit of a risk … would anyone eat them but me?
DW: I was skeptical. I’ll admit it. I thought you were talking about tzatziki.
LW: But I had a jar of tahini from our beets bi tahini recipe experiment and I needed to use it up, so I took the risk. My worries were unfounded because these chocolate tahini cookies by Vegan Richa were amazing! They were so good our kiddo kept “helping” us finish them.
DW: Liz wins! These are really good. A little sweet, a little salty, just great.
LW: These needed minimal adjustments too.
LIZ's changes
Replaced 1.5 T coconut flour and 1 T tapioca starch with 2.5 T gluten free flour (which had starch in it)
I used a light tahini, which I think helped cut any potential bitterness, and added some sea salt on top prior to baking. The sea salt really made these so yummy. I’d highly recommend the addition if you try the recipe!
