Fridays with Beatrice - Arugula risotto with basil & lemon

This time, Lena and me decided to cook the Aragula risotto. I am a fan of risottos, but not of aragula which tastes mostly bitter for me - a taste I do not like (I even cannot drink tonic or something containing grapefruit juice). The idea of a vegetarian risotto was compelling to try, because I tend to make & create risottos with meat or ham to enhance the taste of the otherwise plain dish.

 

I've done risottos many times before after I conquered my 'risotto-fear' about four years ago. So knowing how to make it right, this was easy. I must admit that for a beginner (means never has made a risotto before) this would have been difficult, because there was no explicit description of basics. I, too, was confused when to add the blanched herbs and the aragula - I concluded it had to be just before the end of the cooking process, otherwise there wouldn't have been the need for blanching and you probably would have been loosing the taste. For a risotto it was a lot of preparation to do (compared to others where you just throw the ingredients into your pan) so there was not much light left to take good pictures  - but you can see the result I got.

So it came out nicely, just the consistency I like - he thicker the better, nearly glue-like (with about 800 ml of stock). I used parmesan and frozen parsley but I think that didn't make a big difference.The flavour was lighter than I expected (in a good way) but I missed the lemon taste - would have been perfect with a little bit more lemon flavour.

Roundup:  Not as good as my favourite risotto recipe (with ham and pumpkin, unbeatable) but the same 'wow-that-tastes-good'-effect risottos usually have on me. I guess I will try a herb-and-lemon variation of it (or maybe one with anchovies and capers?); and could imagine using it as a side-dish too.