Cooking with Ricardo

This article was witten as a promotional collaboration for Ricardo Larrivée’s ricardocuisine.com and was published with Fat Girl Food Squad.

I was maybe a strange kid, as other girls my age were watching Family Channel shows or cartoons, it was always Food Network for me when I got home from school. This risotto recipe is coming to us from Ricardo, somebody who, after years of watching him on TV while growing up, I already feel like I am best buddies with him. Like an old family friend. And this risotto is sure to give you the same fuzzy fall feelings. You can find a bunch more super simple recipes on his site. Risotto is deceivingly easy to make, even thought it might seem fancy at first. It was actually one of the very first things I learned how to cook from my dad when I was about 14. For this recipe, the first thing you are going to want to do is roast off your pumpkin. This time of year grocery stores begin to stock what are called “pie pumpkins” – little ones for eating, not carving.

Get the smallest one you can find, you won’t need too much for this risotto. Cut off the top, then cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. It will cook slightly faster if you cut it into quarters. Drizzle with lots of olive oil, salt and pepper, then place them skin side up on a roasting pan and pop them in the oven at 350 F. This will take about an hour so as it is cooking we can get the rest of the ingredients ready. I say “rest of the ingredients” but there’s really not too much else. Just some chopped shallots in the pan with butter, then about two cups of arborio rice. Mix them together to make them nice and toasty.

Because this is a seafood risotto, and maybe also because he is Canadian, instead of white wine Ricardo is calling for the clam juice! It might sound weird, but you can actually find this at most grocery stores in either the condiment section, or in and around the fish counter. Mix the clam juice (I just used the whole bottle, slightly more than one cup) with 4 cups of regular old chicken stock. It’s worth it to heat these up before hand, but you could get away with using both at room temperature if you’re feeling lazy.

Then start slowly adding stock to the rice and onions, ladle by ladle, waiting for all the liquid to absorb into the rice before adding more. Make sure you are stirring almost the whole time! This helps the liquid to absorb better and also stops the whole thing from sticking. I would advise to wait before adding the last of the liquid until right before you serve it, so that it doesn’t get gummy while you’re getting the rest of your stuff together.

For the seafood part, you can use any kind of shellfish you want! Just some frozen shrimp would be fine, but scallops and risotto are best friends. Just olive oil, salt and pepper these guys and brown them off in a pan.

By now the pumpkin is probably all golden brown and delicious. I just lightly ran my knife across without breaking the skin to cube the flesh, then I scraped it into the risotto. Mix it in with the last remaining bit of stock. It also really doesn’t hurt it to add a big hunk of butter at this point. Now you can garnish with your seafood and a little bit of chopped chives! Now just get cozy with some friends, some cider, this risotto and maybe some blankets and become one with fall.