risotto

I made risotto last night with Mel. My favorite part of making risotto is when you add the white wine and suddenly your kitchen is warm and smells like buttery wine.

Cooking in the vegetable broth

Butternut squash risotto with sweet Italian sausage and Parmesan cheese!
This came out so tasty, but it was more sausage and cheesey than squash-y, which is alright by me. I think part of the reason is that there wasn't enough squash (the one I had was a little small) and also this squash was not as flavorful. Maybe I picked a not very ripe one or something. It just wasn't very sweet at all. I haven't really cooked with butternut squash very much though... how can you tell if you've picked a good one? Next time, I'm going to smoosh the squash and stir it in, instead of putting it in as chunks.

I had left over risotto but most of the sausage was all eaten, so I put in some shrimp. Now I am out of shrimp.

Sweet potato fries with 6 kinds of dips. Clockwise: BBQ, some sort of mayonaise based dip, chipotle ketchup, honey dijon, mayo-dip again by mistake, basil pesto, and regular ketchup which I got after I took this picture. The only reason I got fries is so I could try all the dips, but the fries are also really good as well. It is the perfect mix of salty and sweet (not like kettle corn, ugh) and they are perfectly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The best dips are the basil pesto (is that redundant or is basil pesto called pesto alla genovese?) and the mayo dip. The honey dijon is just too intense and the chipotle ketchup tastes burnt.


ALSO, here is the recipe I used for just the risotto. Then you can add butternut squash or sausage or whatever you'd like in there:
2 cups of arborio rice
5 cups of vegetable broth (I actually only had 4, so I used 1 cup of water)
1 1/2 cups of white wine
2 tablespoons of butter
1 small yellow onion (I used 1/2 a big red onion because it was all I had, but sweet yellow onions will be better, probably)
1 cup of parm cheese
Salt

1. Chop up your onion and cook it in the butter
2. While the onion is cooking, bring the vegetable broth to a simmer
3. Once the onions are soft, put in the rice and make sure it gets mixed up in the butter. Let it get toasty for like 2 minutes
4. Add the wine and let it cook until all the liquid is absorbed
5. Then add a ladle full of warm vegetable broth, cook until it is absorbed, then add more until it's all the broth is gone. If you run out of broth and it's not cooked, you can add water.
6. Once it's cooked (don't keep adding liquid if it's already cooked!!), mix in the parmesean cheese and sausage and squash and be happy