Melbourne Recipe Club

Coconut Risotto with Lemon and Parsley (Coconut) May 10, 2014

This was the main course of the coconut-themed dinner.

Unlike my entree, I used a lot of recipes and didn’t follow any of them very closely.

The flavours came from this baked risotto. The quantities of rice/stock/coconut milk from this coconut and asparagus risotto (which sounds delicious) although I did 1.5x the quantities for 6 servings. The method came from this slightly pretentious article. The idea to cook the risotto to about 75% beforehand and then ‘finish’ it later came from this site (as did the warnings against doing so).

Ingredients

• 2 and 1/4 cups carnaroli rice (this is a type of risotto rice – arborio is the most common but bizarrely my local coles only had carnaroli)
• 3 litres stock (I was too tired to make my own – I used the pre-made Massel brand chicken stock)
• 2 small brown onions finely chopped
• 2 tbsps vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 and 1/2 cups coconut milk
• 3 tbsps lemon juice
• 2 tsps lemon zest
• 1 cup parsley
• 1/3 cup parmesan
• 1/4 cup flaked coconut

Method

1. In a heavy based pan sweat the onions in the vegetable oil – this should be done on a low heat and it should take about 10 mins for the onions to become translucent. You don’t want the onions to brown so keep them moving – the risotto stirring starts now!
2. Put about half your stock in a saucepan until it starts simmering – keep it on a low heat.
3. Turn the heat up and add the rice, stir to cover in onion and oil and to start toasting the grains – apparently this is the key to reducing the risotto cooking time – I don’t think I cooked the rice for long enough here because I was worried about burning it.
4. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed.
5. Now the risotto making begins in earnest. Add a ladle of warm stock to the rice. Keep stirring until all the stock is absorbed. Resist the urge to add more stock until the previous ladle is completely absorbed. Keep adding stock, keep stirring. Every so often top up the stock in the saucepan, keeping it at a simmer.
6. I kept this up until I’d used about 1.8 litres of stock.
7. I then turned it off and quickly ladled it out and spread it on about 8 or 9 plates to cool for about 10 minutes and then put it in the fridge.
8. When I got to Laura’s I tipped the risotto back into my heavy based pot. It still looked pretty good. Nice and glossy and starchy and creamy. It quickly absorbed quite a lot of stock (approx 600 ml), however I knew I still had 1.5 cups of coconut milk to add and I felt like it was starting to overcook.
9. I then added the coconut milk (straight from the tin) and my beautiful creamy risotto turned to thick porridge! After all that stirring!
10. Anyway – I kept stirring but it didn’t look like it was going to reduce so I added the lemon juice, zest and parmesan.
11. I gave it a fairly vigorous stir and then served it topped with the chopped parsley and coconut flakes.

It tasted delicious and the flavours were good but the texture wasn’t quite right for me.
I wonder if heating the coconut milk would have helped and/or making the risotto in one go. Anyway I’d definitely make it again.