Black Garlic Portobello Risotto with Sweet Peas

C'était le Nouvel An Lunaire Chinois la semaine dernière, et donc c'était une semaine de travail très courte. Alors, nous avons profité le très long week-end, passé du temps avec nos proches et dormi beaucoup, c'était super!

J'ai entendu beaucoup des plaintes parce que les célébrations du Nouvel An Chinois sont affectées à cause de restrictions de distanciation sociale, les gens sont mécontents parce qu'ils ne peuvent pas rendre visite à leur familles/proches ce Nouvel An Chinois...mais je ne les comprends pas 😕: Singapour est si petit géographiquement, nous pouvons voir nos familles/proches à tout moment, nous n'avons certainement pas besoin d'attendre le Nouvel An Chinois pour visiter nos familles/proches, non? Et si vous ne voyez vos familles/proches qu'une fois par an pendant le Nouvel An Chinois, quand nous vivons tous très près les uns des autres à Singapour, puis il n'y a sûrement aucun dommage de ne pas les avoir vus pour juste un Nouvel An Chinois, non? 

Allez gens, on devrait être reconnaissants de vivre dans un pays relativement indemne de la pandémie mondiale, s'on doit faire un trop trop petit sacrifice personnel pour ne pas voir ses familles/proches pendant un Novel An Chinois (qu'on ne voit pas à d'autres moments de l'année de toute façon, alors quel est le problème?). En tous cas, il y a 350 autres jours pendant l'année pour visiter à vos familles/proches, non? pff 😑 vraiment, les Singapouriens se plaignent trop...quel dommage!

 

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Unlike most other years, we weren't able to take advantage of the long CNY weekend to get away for a little jaunt. So like many of our "orphaned" friends unable to return home to spend the Chinese New Year holidays with their families, we were toggling between hibernating at home and catching up on sleep, or partying it up (as best we can within the limits of Covid-19 social distancing restrictions of course). The extroverted carousing busy-bee part won out, and so I thought I'd host a few dinner soirées, lend a little cheer to friends "marooned" on our little red dot of an island. 

Suffice it to say, the Chinese New Year holidays were a whirlwind of events and an excess of gluttony and imbibing. (and sloth of course 😓 it's been impossible to return to the gym, and let's just say the 2021 lose-weight get-fit new-me resolution is a bust) 

Still, I'm thankful. Thankful that I am surrounded by my loved ones, thankful that I get to spend precious time with them, and thankful that we are safe in the best country in the world (before some of you haters jump, yes I see our tiny city state for its warts too but this is not the time for that exposition so don't @me)...(also yes I will freely admit I'm totally 💯biased but I think I'm allowed to unabashedly love my own country so don't @me either)

So...as you can imagine, it was a bit of a last minute plan to throw a dinner party, and marketing to feed a small army was no mean feat, considering everyone else was planning to cook at home over the Lunar New Year and had wiped out most foods at the grocers. So instead of shopping with a fixed list, I looked up whatever was available at the markets to put together a menu. Using the whole head of black garlic leftover from the lobster risotto I cooked a while back, I added a box of sweet peas I found at Culina for a classic mushroom risotto. There wasn't any grana padano, but there was a block of pecorino at the fromager to lend some piquancy to the earthiness of this dish. 

 

Ingredients (feeds 4-5 as a main):

 

2 cups arborio rice 

1L chicken stock

1 cup minced yellow onion

4 garlic cloves, slightly bashed

2 cloves garlic, minced, about 2 tbsp

1/2 cup sake

30 baby portobellos, sliced 

3 cups sweet pea

1 cup pecorino cheese, grated

1 head black garlic

olive oil

2 tsbp-heaps butter 

salt

 

 

Directions:

 

1) Fry 2 tbsp minced garlic in 1 tbsp olive oil on medium heat until toasty but taking care not to burn it, about 40 seconds. 

2) Add baby portobellos and toss, turning up the heat to medium-high, frying until water released is cooked off. Salt to taste, and then set aside.

3) Melt 2 tbsp-heap (about 1 knob) of butter into 2 tbsp olive oil on medium heat. 

4) Add whole bashed garlic cloves and toss around until fragrant but not burnt, about 2 minutes. Once the garlic cloves are golden brown-ish, remove and discard them (as Chef Anne Burrell says, they've fulfilled their garlic destiny).  

5) Add minced onions, turn the heat up to medium-high, and fry till fragrant and translucent, about 3 minutes.  

6) Add rice, dry-frying the grains to impart a toasty flavour, about 1-2 minutes. 

7) Add sake and toss around until sake is almost cooked off, about 1 minute. 

8) Add chicken stock, a cup at a time and stirring through so the liquid is absorbed incrementally. This will take time, and about 9 iterations of stock adding, until rice is "al dente" (if u look closely, you will see that the grain is just halfway translucent

9) In the meantime, blanch sweet peas in salted boiling water, drain (ice-shocking the peas first to stop them from cooking further) and set aside.

10) After about 4-5 iterations of stock adding, add black garlic, squishing them into the rice so the bulbs melt into the risotto. 

11) After the 8th or last addition of stock, add portobellos and stir through. 

12) Add sweet peas and stir through. 

13) Once risotto is al dente, turn off heat and add pecorino, stirring through to coat every grain. 

14) Add butter and melt through too. 

15) Serve with extra grated cheese.