The Strawberry Risotto

This recipe I got from my cooking challenge group. We started it when lockdown began in Italy to keep ourselves busy and stay in contact. I changed it a bit, since I didn’t understand it fully, but it turned out fabulous. You get the changed version. It is an easy dish and actually not that sweet as you maybe would think. I am actually thinking about trying it with other fruits as well.

What you need:
(Since it is more common in Europe I use grams and litres, but feel free to go to this site and convert it to the measurements you’re familiar with.)

320g rice (arborio, when you have or can get it)
300g strawberries
200g cream
40g parmesan
40g butter
50g milk
some chives

First wash and cut the main part of the strawberries into small pieces and melt half of the butter in a pot. Add the strawberries in the pot. The smaller part is for decoration, so you should cut them in halves.

Meanwhile toast the rice with the other part of the butter in a pan. When it has a nice color you should start adding water to it. Just enough to cover it, then you let it cook till the water is gone, then you add again and so on.

After you put the strawberries in the pot you let them brown a little bit and then add the creme. Stir it, so it gets a nice creamy texture.

You should be in the middle of the rice cooking, which means it should still be hard, so you add the strawberry cream mixture, the milk and the chives. When the rice is ready you put off the heat and mix the parmesan with the rest. Put the Risotto on the plates and add some of the decoration strawberries.

I used arborio risotto rice when I made the pictures, because that’s the one I had at that moment, is perfect for all kinds of risottos, and its needs more time for cooking than other rice. Right now I use some jasmine rice for my risottos since it is some leftover from the girls who lived here and I want to finish that first… it’s faster cooked than the arborio and doesn’t have that much starch what is mostly interesting for the creaminess. Since we use cream in that recipe it should be totally fine with other sorts of rice. Just check at the start how long your rice needs to cook, so you get a better idea how long your rice need. (Don’t forget, the time on the rice package is for cooking in plain water, with cream the time will change.)

Please keep in mind, I am cooking for many years. I try to explain it easily and give extra information as tipps. But it can be, that when you’re a beginner in cooking, you understand something wrong. Because I used wrong words (I am not an english native, as you probably noticed) or forget to mentioned a thing which is totally obvious for me and you just didn’t know. So when something went wrong don’t get upset, try again. Find out, what went wrong or on what point. When you can’t work on two pots same time, first only prepare the strawberry cream and then start the rice.