Butternut squash and blue cheese risotto recipe

“Amazing” is the only word I can use to describe this, the risotto is creamy yet ever so slightly salty from the cheese. The recipe below made more than enough for 4 (probably enough for 6) so I had left overs for lunch the next day.

Ingredients

• 1 big organic butternut squash (the one I used was 1.4KG)
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• Ground black pepper
• 1 large organic onion
• 75g of unsalted butter
• A bottle of white wine (You can drink most of it)
• 1.5litres of vegetable stock
• 300g of soft blue cheese (I couldn’t find Gorgonzola so I used Saint Agur)
• 500g of risotto rice

Method

• Preheat oven to 220C (reduce if you’ve got a fan oven).
• Peel, halve, deseed and slice the butternut squash, drizzle with the olive oil and season with ground black pepper.
• Place the seasoned squash on a baking tray and bake in the oven until soft (40 minutes was enough for me, turn the squash after 20).
• Remove the squash from the oven and chop into bite size pieces.
• Add the butter to a large pan and melt over a medium heat.
• Finely dice the onion and add to the pan, cook until soft.
• Add the risotto rice, stir until coated in butter.
• Add a small glass of white wine, stir, drink the rest of the bottle.
• Turn the heat down to low.
• Add the stock, one ladle at a time, stir continuously until the rice has taken up the liquid then add another ladle of stock until it’s all gone. Now is probably not the time for a game of Angry Birds, you need to stir all the time and not let the rice stick to the pan. This will probably take half an hour.
• At the very last minute add the chopped butternut squash and stir.
• Break the blue cheese into chunks, add it to the risotto and stir.
• Check the seasoning, you probably don’t want to add any salt but fire away with the black pepper!
• Serve with some freshly baked focaccia and more wine.