If you’ve ever tasted any food with “truffle” in front of it, you know why it’s so popular. It can turn any ordinary dish into heaven on a fork. Honestly, if it wasn’t so expensive I would add it to every dish I cook. It’s apparently very hard to farm truffles because they grow underground only in certain tree’s roots.
Fun Fact:
The smell is supposed to be similar to the scent of the male pig’s sex hormone. Yum..
Farmers use female pigs to extract these hard to find truffles from underground. Come on ladies, you know a male pig is sexy and his smell is even more enticing! What can I say?… A girl (pig) knows what a girl (pig) wants.
I fell in love with a truffle risotto that I had once at a French restaurant a few years back… This place became my go to spot whenever I wanted good food. Then, one day I went and they’d changed the menu!
No.
More.
Truffle.
Risotto…
I almost cried. I mean, that’s how good this dish was. After I stewed and pouted for a few days, I thought—why don’t I just make it myself? So here’s what I came up with…
Yields: 7 1/2 cups
Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 45 min
Ingredients:
8 oz (1 bunch) fresh spinach
2 small/medium carrots (peeled, then julienned)
16 (about ½ carton) grape tomatoes (halved)
1 medium white onion (diced)
1 cup Arborio rice
8 mushrooms (sliced)
¼ cup walnuts (chopped), divided
4 cups vegetable broth
1/8 cup parmesan cheese (shredded)
½ cup fat free mozzarella cheese (shredded)
2 tbsp truffle oil
1 tbsp olive oil, divided
2 tbsp parsley, divided
1. Heat pan over medium heat and drizzle with ½ tbsp. olive oil. Add only a handful of onions and all of carrots to pan. Reduce heat to low and cover, cooking ~10 minutes. The carrots should be a little soft, but still have a crunch to them.
2. Meanwhile, drizzle ½ tbsp. olive oil in a second heated pan. Add the rest of the onions and cook over medium heat until translucent. Reduce heat to low and add rice to the onions only pan. Cook ~ 2 minutes, stirring continuously. Rice should start to brown, but not burn.
3. Increase heat of the second pan to medium and add ½ cup of the vegetable broth at a time, stirring until the broth is absorbed. Repeat with the remaining broth making sure that all of the liquid is absorbed before adding more broth. This process will take ~20 minutes. Save the last ½ cup of broth until the end.
4. Add mushrooms to the carrot/onion mixture and continue to cook on low, covered ~ 5 minutes.
5. Add 1 tbsp parsley, walnuts, and spinach to carrot/onion mixture and cook ~ 3 minutes.
6. Add last ½ cup vegetable broth to the rice. Just before it’s all absorbed, add vegetable mixture, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese to rice. Stir.
7. Top with parmesan cheese and the rest of the walnuts and parsley.
8. Drizzle with truffle oil when serving.
The Cook’s 2 cents:
· You don’t need a lot of olive oil when sautéing the carrots. Carrots have a high water content-as long as you cover them, they won’t’ burn. Just stir them every few minutes.
· Same goes with the truffle oil. It’s expensive. And very strong. You don’t need a lot of it to pack the flavor in.
· Initially the risotto needs constant stirring, or it will burn. After it’s absorbed some of the water, you won’t need to stir as frequently.
· Make sure all of the water is absorbed before adding the next ½ cup. If you don’t wait, you’ll end up with soup. When it starts sticking to the pan—add more water.
Nutrition facts:
Svg size: 1 ½ cups Svgs per recipe: 5
Calories: 357 Fat: 18g Sodium: 589mg Carbs: 40g Fiber: 4g Sugars: 4 g Protein: 10 g
