Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Turshen’s
Risotto With Peas + Greens
from their cookbook
It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great
will ruin you to all other risottos.
They make the majority of restaurant version taste like you are eating a Buick.
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Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 litre vegetable stock
- 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- ½ yellow onion, finely diced (about ¾ cup)
- 1 leek, white and light green parts only, thoroughly washed and finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
- Leaves from 6 sprigs of thyme
- Coarse sea salt
- 1 cup Arborio rice
- 2 cups baby spinach or any other baby greens
- 1 cup fresh english peas (or you can substitute small frozen peas)
- ¼ cup roughly chopped fresh basil
- Freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Warm the vegetable stock in a small pot and set it on the back burner over low heat.
Using a microplane grater or a zester, zest the lemon and set the zest aside. Cut the lemon in half, juice it, and set the juice aside.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy pot set over high heat. Add the onion and leek, turn the heat down to medium, and cook until the vegetables just begin to soften, about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and thyme along with a big pinch of salt and cook until all the aromatics are, well, aromatic, another 2 minutes.
Turn the heat to high, add the rice and the reserved lemon juice, and stir to combine all the ingredients.
Cook until the lemon juice is just evaporated and then stir in a ladleful of the warm stock. Continue to stir the risotto until the stock is absorbed, then stir in another ladleful of stock.
Continue in this manner until the rice is cooked through and you’ve used all your stock, about 20 minutes. At this point your arm should feel as if it’s going to fall off and the rice should be luxuriously creamy and rich.
Stir in the reserved lemon zest, the greens and peas (these will cook with the risotto’s residual heat), the basil, and a few healthy grinds of pepper.
Serve immediately.
