“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.