#3 Squash risotto you won't regret

autumnal, zero-waste, vegan, creamy af!!

Sometimes risotto is a vehicle for butter and parmesan and so it should be. It can fall with a lovely heavy glonk on the plate and you fork out creamy, salty chunkfuls.

I used to make beetroot risotto to invite friends round at university. Deep purple pink because the water the beetroot had been boiled in became the stock that fattened the rice. Friends would arrive with the parmesan I’d asked them to pick up (costs must be shared) and we’d grate in a few triangles until it was so cheesy it would be impossible to not love it. We’d sit cross legged around my cupboard doors, unscrewed from their hinges and assembled as a makeshift table (sometimes pushed out through the window onto the flat roof/ sometimes in my bedroom with a sock over the fire alarm), and sink in and eat and drink and chat and then clean up the stained bowls now filled with cigarette butts.

On a cold Sunday this February, I reluctantly promised my then-vegan (now enthusiatic meat-eater) housemate that I would make us a butternut squash risotto with no butter or cheese. I anticipated that B would have to deal with a slightly disappointing version, whilst H and I got to drown ours in dairy. But something about the natural creaminess that comes from the squash meant that I was totally disinterested in the parmesan we’d put on the side ‘This was so delicious - strangely creamy from the butternut squash - I didn’t even add cheese. B, H and I ate happily on the sofa’

I’ve made it again a few times and am now convinced that this is not just the best vegan risotto in the world, but one of the best risottos full stop. Oop yep there it is - I said it.

I think the secret is making the stock with the peel and seeds of your squash. The first time I cooked it, I recorded: ‘started with stock - whatever was in our bowl of scraps + some carrots, most of a fat leek + onion + the peelings of butternut squash + seeds of butternut squash’. I was amazed how the flavour really came through and it tasted just so squash-y.

I consulted my notes when I made it again this week for the third or fourth time. I didn’t have any vegetable scraps saved but I roughly chopped a few carrots, a few onions, a leek and the bulb of some celery and put them in a pot. I had frozen the peel and seeds of a squash that I’d made a curry with a couple of weeks ago with this moment in mind (a gratifying kitchen choreography) so I added that to the pot along with the peel and seeds from today’s squashes. Cover your vegetables with water, add a big pinch of salt, bring to the boil and then let them simmer for a couple of hours. I think the celery might have overpowered the butternut a tiny bit so I picked it out when I tasted it half way - it would probably be marginally better to keep it simple with leeks, onions, carrots and butternut scraps…

The first time I made it, I cut the squash flesh into thin rounds. But this most recent time I went for small cubes and I think I prefer that. I used two squash because they were quite small. I put them in a roasting tray with a glug of oil, a big pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper and shook some ground nutmeg on generously. Let the squash roast on 200C until tender - the softer the better. Maybe check in after 10 minutes and shake the cubes around so that all sides get brown. Taste them when they’re done and add more nutmeg if they’re not nutmeggy enough.

While the squash was roasting and the stock was simmering, I chopped four onions (because they were also really small ones - if they’re sizeable, fewer would do) and a leek. Recently I’ve been adding a leek whenever I cook onions and I think it’s a vibe. Thinly sliced whatever way would work fine but this time I used my mandolin to make lovely thin rounds. Obviously to make the vegan version use vegetable oil or olive oil here but this week I used butter….

I had a lot of time to cook (we’re talking apron-on, radio-on, settle-in-for-the-afternoon bliss) so I had the leeks and onions on the lowest temperature and tried to leave them as long as I could.

When they were soft and stringy, I poured in quite a lot of white wine that we had leftover - it was just under a quarter of a bottle - and turned the heat up to let it fry off. Then I added a few cloves of garlic, sliced. I love it when onions get to that place where they taste so soft but also a little translucent and crunchy.

When I first made this, I ‘added risotto rice and beat around a bit. Slowly added the stock. Then the butternut squash and roast-y juices’ . But this time I added the squash and juices straight into the onion/leeks and mixed it until they became together and gunky. Then I added the risotto rice (I don’t know how much - I sort of eyeballed it and it worked- but most packets will tell you how much you need for however many people) and beat it around all together. I think this way round was better for the creaminess…

Now it’s pretty much ready for the final stage. I strained out the stock. Obviously my refusal to really think about quantities meant there wasn’t enough liquid (but it was delicious and rich and perfect!!) so I took a chance and put some more water in with the scraps and boiled it again for the hour during which I was slowly adding the initial stock to the risotto. I was worried this second batch would be too weak so added a quarter of a vegetable stock cube (cheating!). It was a moment of improv that paid off…

Because I had this heavenly amount of time to spend cooking, I really did the whole very slow risotto thing in a way that I have never been patient enough for before. I think if you leave it on the lowest possible heat you can pour in quite a good volume of stock at a time (not the bit by bit method) and just keep stirring as it incrementally soaks in. I’d occasionally turn it off and let it sit because I was trying to time it well for when the friends were coming round to eat, and I think this helped me to get it to a good texture. So maybe when you think it’s nearly done, turn it off like you do with scrambled eggs because it will keep cooking a little anyway. You can leave the last bit of stock to add when you know you want to eat soon. Add salt and pepper to taste - lots of black pepper is good.

I put the blue tablecloth out to make it feel like an occasion. We ate the risotto with a sharp salad of mandolined apple and celery with ripped up mint, chopped walnuts, lime juice and some of the pumpkin seed oil A had brought home when he came back from seeing his Mum. Lemon juice alone would probably have been fine.

We also had a green salad with leaves from my Mum’s garden and a simple french-ish dressing that I’ve been making recently with mustard, rice wine vinegar and oil. My logic was that if we don’t have parmesan on the risotto, we should have it on the salad.

Some plates added parmesan to the risotto and when can that really go wrong? But I still found it unnescessary and just added salt, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon to mine. I think it was the best version yet :)

Thinking about lovely colourful risottos makes me think of this moment from Big Night where they serve three risottos fashioned as the Italian flag… Maybe I could do my own autumnal flag one day with a squash one, a beetroot one and something else…