Asparagus Risotto

Our love for the shortcut-risotto recipe from a back issue of Oprah magazine is well-known. We've long been making it with mushrooms, and we recently made it with sweet potatoes. Today I took one of the sidebar suggestions I've been meaning to make for a long time and made it with asparagus, which has recently come into season (sounds like a mare in heat, doesn't it?) and which was only $2/lb this week.

The basic risotto recipe, as laid out on page 166 of the October 2006 issue, is as follows:

2.5 cups chicken stock

1 T butter

1 cup long-grain brown rice

1 cup grated parmesan

Parsley for garnish

1. Bring chicken stock to a boil. Add butter. Once butter is melted, stir in the rice and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and cook 45-50 minutes. The rice should be moist.

2. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Stir in cheese, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

For my part, I always double this recipe, I don't use parsley, and I don't use chicken stock. For stock, which I've found largely useless, I use an equal amount of water with about a tablespoon of salt thrown in; if I'm making the mushroom variety, sometimes I'll use half mushroom broth (which can be hard to find). The parsley, well, I just ignore that part.

In this case, I also found inspiration in this asparagus risotto recipe, which calls for braising the asparagus and then reserving the water to cook the rice in. However, it merely said "braise the asparagus in water," when to my mind, braising is a two-step process of first browning the food and then cooking it with water or steam. Maybe that's just implied. Anyway, what I did was to cut the tough ends off the asparagus, and then chop it into 1-1.5 inch pieces.

Then I sauteed them in olive oil until they turned bright green, about two minutes.

Then I added 2 cups of water, brought that to a simmer, and cooked for 3 minutes.

Then I put a colander over the pot I planned to cook the risotto in and poured in the asparagus and the water. I added another 3 cups of water to make 5 total (since I was doubling the recipe), then added another 1/2 cup for what I was guessing the asparagus had absorbed. Then I measured it just to be sure. What do you know? Perfect.

Then I brought all of that plus two tablespoons of butter to a boil. Added two cups of long-grain brown rice, and let it simmer for 50 minutes.

I rinsed the asparagus in cold water so it would stop cooking. 

At the end, I stirred in 1.5 cups of Parmesan (look at me, practicing restraint for a change!) and the asparagus.

YUM!