I know what you’re thinking and NO I did not scrape out the inside of a squirrel and put it in a bowl!
In the days before I started caring about what I put in my body I used to make a gooey goats cheese and pea risotto containing an entire packet of cream cheese, and goats cheese, even thinking of the calorie count makes my thighs jiggle! But it was, as most sinful things are, fiendishly delightful! And boy did I miss it.
So I decided to try and make a vegan risotto. Now as you may have noticed I’m not a huge fan of using substitutes such as vegan butter or cheese as I find if you don’t substitute things you eat much cleaner, in fact other than my pasta there are very few processed foods in my diet and I like to keep it that way wherever possible. So that meant creating a vegan risotto with no butter and no cheese that didn’t taste like gruel….hmmm.
So I researched and um-ed and ah-ed a bit before settling for a Beetroot risotto. Now I’ve never been a fan of the traditional pickled Beetroot, I have childhood memories of happily eating a salad and suddenly feeling like my face was going to turn inside out. I have never cooked with traditional Beetroot and thought ‘why not add to the challenge’.
What you need:
– Beetroot, two bulbs (obviously, and for those budget conscious like me fresh Beetroot is ALARMINGLY cheap about one fifty for a big bunch in your local Morrisons)
– 1 litre of vegetable stock (I’ll skimp on almost anything but stock is NOT one of them, I recommend Knorr stock pots)
– an onion sized onion
– 125ml of white wine (plus the rest of the bottle to swig from and spill down your front while cooking and singing)
– 2 tbsp olive oil (extra virgin is good because the olives aren’t even felt up a little bit…maybe a bit but only above the waist)
– 2 cloves of garlic
– 250g of arborio rice
– Seasoning
What to do:
– Open the wine and have a glass, it makes the whole process much more enjoyable.
– Grate the Beetroot. WEAR GLOVES. I saw that in the recipe and thought ‘well that’s a bit over hygienic’ and as a consequence my hands were bright pink for three days, it may have been the wine but it was an epic logic-to-brain-malfunction!
– Heat the oil until more oily and fry the garlic and onion until soft and smelly….yum!
– Add the rice and stir for two minutes until glistening and sexy.
– Slowly add the wine….to your mouth and then add the bit you measured (oh yeah don’t forget to measure it out BEFORE getting sloshed) slowly to the rice stirring until dissolved.
– Add the shredded Beetroot and immediately wash the bowl it’s been in. I now have one pink cereal bowl to match my hands.
– Add the stock slowly ladle full by ladle full allowing the rice to drink it all up before adding more, do this until its gone and the risotto looks like risotto.
– Season clumsily, as you’ll probably be quite drunk by then.
– Eat the whole pan instead of ordering a drunken kebab.
And it really is so easy a hammered northern student who can’t spell can manage it.
This really opened my eyes to how unnecessary so much of the dairy we use is. Risotto rice with the stock creates a base that is really creamy with out needing to use any cheese or butter…then again if your a veggie and not held in the shackles of not being allowed any thing awesome chuck some cheese in it.
I hope you find this entertaining and delicious after all we really do not eat enough purple food!
Happy drinking.
The Foodie
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