Recipe of the Month: Asparagus-Mushroom Risotto

According to the calendar (and the weather report, which is predicting snow flurries later today), spring isn't officially here yet. But signs of it are everywhere. Yesterday, for the first time this year, I was able to hang out a load of laundry...

...and pick a bunch of wildflowers (even if they're supposedly weeds) for the vase in the kitchen.

And on a recent trip to Aldi, we spotted asparagus on sale for just $1.49 a pound. Normally, I like to enjoy each food in its proper season, but I just couldn't pass up a bargain like that. Maybe if I'd felt confident that our asparagus patch would provide us with a good supply of the green stuff in just a month or two, I'd have held out for that, but its performance last year was so disappointing that I can't be sure we'll even get a single meal's worth out of it this year.

After we got it home, Brian started hunting online for asparagus recipes, and he hit on one at Life's Ambrosia for asparagus and mushroom risotto. This was kind of similar to another dish we'd already made several times, the polenta with mushrooms and asparagus from Better Homes and Gardens' Easy Vegetarian Dinners, so he knew this flavor combo worked for us. And since we'd also happened to pick up some mushrooms on sale on that same trip to Aldi, we had nearly everything we needed.

As usual, Brian made a few alterations to the recipe. First, he halved it, so we could save half of our pound of asparagus for later. We didn't have any arborio rice, so he decided to try it with plain old long-grain white rice, and he substituted a quarter-cup of chopped red onion for half a shallot. In addition to the cup and a half of plain sliced button mushrooms, he added a quarter-cup of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaking them in warm water until they softened and then dicing them. (This is what he usually does for the polenta recipe, which calls for a mixture of exotic mushrooms that we're not generally prepared to splurge on.) And rather than waste the cup of water the mushrooms were soaked in, he substituted it for half the vegetable broth the recipe called for. So his version of the recipe ended up looking like this:

Asparagus-Mushroom Risotto

1 tablespoon olive oil, divided

½ pound asparagus, snapped into 1-to-2- inch pieces

1 ½ cups sliced mushrooms

¼ cup dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in warm water until soft, then diced

1 cup water in which the shiitake mushrooms were soaked

1 cup vegetable broth

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch black pepper

1/2 tablespoon (vegan) butter

1/4 c. red onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup rice (arborio preferred)

1/2 cup dry sherry (or white wine)

1. In a pan or Dutch oven, heat a half tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add mushrooms and saute until they begin to release moisture, then add asparagus and saute until the stems turn bright green. Remove vegetables to a bowl and keep warm.
2. In a separate saucepan, heat broth over medium heat with the mushroom water. Keep hot while preparing risotto.
3. In the same vessel used to cook the mushrooms and asparagus, heat butter and remaining olive oil over medium heat. Once butter melts, stir in onion and cook just until softened. Stir in rice just until it is coated in the butter. Do not brown. Pour in sherry and cook until it is absorbed. Add the hot broth mixture gradually to the rice, one ladle-full at a time, until all of the liquid has been absorbed. 
4. It may be necessary to heat up additional water to add if the broth mixture is not sufficient make the rice soft and creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Stir in asparagus and mushrooms. Serve immediately.

This experiment was reasonably successful. Making risotto is a bit of a lengthy process under the best of circumstances, and Brian found that the long-grain rice took up even more liquid than the recipe said the arborio rice would (hence the addition of step 4 in the recipe above). All in all, it took about half an hour to cook. But by the time it was done, it had more or less achieved the tender, creamy texture risotto is supposed to have. And between the asparagus, mushrooms, red onion, and sherry, it was loaded with umami.

 

I suggested that perhaps if we make this dish again, he could try it in the pressure cooker. I've heard this is a great tool for making risotto, because the liquid can't boil off, so it all soaks into the rice like it's supposed to. The rice takes less time to cook, and it's a lot less work, because you don't have to stand there over it constantly ladling more liquid on.

So maybe next time, we could do the rice according to this recipe at Hip Pressure Cooking. We might even spring for some real arborio or short-grain rice to make sure it comes out properly. With this change, the recipe should only take about twenty minutes to make, so it will be a light, savory, and quick meal for spring.