Nine months ago my wife and I had a baby boy. When he was born I thought about what I could cook for him and this is the first recipe I’ve attempted that works for both adults and baby. I used baby stock cubes and didn’t add any salt until serving. I usually add a glass of wine as well but I’ve included that as optional here. I made the risotto for dinner one night and made the leftovers into arancini the next day. Both were really nice and the arancini are a great baby snack and they freeze once cooked.
Serves: 4 as risotto and then makes 12 arancini balls
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients
Risotto
- Vegetable stock, 2 litres
- Dry white wine, 250ml
- Arborio rice, 300g
- 1 large Butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes
- 4 Banana shallots, finely chopped
- 4 Cloves of garlic, minced
- Parmesan cheese, finely grated, 100g
- Dried sage, 2 tsp
- Butter, 50g (I used unsalted for the baby recipe)
Arancini
- 1 egg, beaten
- flour, 25g (ish)
- breadcrumbs, 100g
Method
Start by roasting the butternut squash for 30 mins at 2000C. While the butternut squash is roasting get started on the risotto.
Get the veg stock ready, keep it warm in a big pan. Melt the butter in a large pan (I used a paella pan). Fry the shallots for around 7-8 mins until soft, add the garlic and stir for 1 min. Next, add the rice and stir until all the rice is coated with butter. At this point, if you’re using wine add it now and simmer until it’s all absorbed. Now add the stock a couple of ladles at a time. Keep stirring and add stock gradually. This entire process takes a while, stir-add-stir-add, but it’s worth it; I think it makes a creamier risotto than just adding all the stock at once.
When the rice is cooked (took about 45 mins for me) you should have a nice creamy looking risotto. Add the sage and parmesan and mix through. Finally, add the butternut squash and stir well. I like to crush some of the butternut squash under a wooden spoon. Service with more parmesan if you like. At this point, I also added salt to the adult portions.
Arancini
The next morning I made the leftover risotto into arancini. Put the flour on a plate, beat the egg in a shallow ramekin and spread the breadcrumbs on a second plate. The idea is to dip the risotto into the three ingredients, flour then egg then breadcrumbs. Roll the risotto into golf ball-sized balls and coat as above. To cook, add 2 tbs of olive oil to a frying pan and fry on all sides for around a minute, the breadcrumbs should go lovely and golden. At this point, most of my arancini looked like cubes but they tasted great.
