Last week I began my quest to incorporate more of Alton Brown’s suggestions into my eating. Instead of planning ahead, I grabbed some pre-cubed sweet potatoes at the grocery store and figured I would decide what to do with them later. A few days of eating rice and eggs later, I checked the expiration date on the potatoes. Tomorrow. Shit. I haven’t had internet at home so I guiltily took a few minutes at work to look up recipes.
My friend Deepa suggested that I make risotto and I tried to push it out of my head—I didn’t know what went into risotto, but I was sure it wasn’t good for me. I found this recipe for Sweet Potato, Carrot, Apple, and Red Lentil Soup, and felt all virtuous and healthy. Then doubt crept in. Was I really going to make YET ANOTHER soup? And. . . would risotto really be so bad? After a few minutes of trying to talk myself out of it, I did it anyway. I found this recipe for Sweet Potato Pecan Risotto. I had most of the ingredients already. I wrote off the four tablespoons of butter with all sorts of guilty, girly excuses (but if this makes 3-4 servings, that’s only, like, 1 tablespoon per serving. And Alton Brown didn’t say not to eat it, right?) because hey, I was going to cook with sweet potatoes. I’d heard risotto could be difficult, so then I didn’t want to chicken out and just make soup again. It was time to (wo)man up.
After much frustrated searching, I found the Arborio rice for the risotto and the vegetable broth, and headed home. I decided to (predictably) leave the shallots out. Following the recipe, I heated up a can and a half of the vegetable broth and let it simmer to keep it hot. I melted the butter, added the pecans and the pre-cubed sweet potatoes. Then, it was go time. I had to add the risotto, and then add “about ¾-cup” of the hot broth, and stir it constantly until it was absorbed at the vague temperature of medium-high. Many things about this recipe were vague. In the instructions, I counted the word “about” three times. “About” is not a good word for the hesitant and perfectionist chef. So I decided not to be that girl.
I eyeballed it—poured what I thought looked like ¾ cup into the pan and started stirring. I began to worry immediately about the sweet potato-to-rice ratio. I had no idea how the rice would ever absorb the moisture of the broth, given that it was being overrun by gigantic hunks of sweet potato.
Nevertheless, I stirred. My arm started to get tired, but I don’t do all those pushups at the gym for nothing. After a few minutes, I poured in more broth. According to the recipe, this was supposed to take 25 minutes, slowly adding the broth, stirring frequently until it’s absorbed, adding more broth, etc. etc. I had no idea how this was going to take so long. I had a feeling I was doing it wrong already.
But then the rice started to puff up a little bit, and the liquid was actually disappearing.
I was feeling gutsy. I poured broth with abandon. A few months ago, I probably would have done the anal-retentive thing and poured the boiling-hot broth into a measuring cup, risking burns for accuracy’s sake, before pouring it in. But not now. I poured and stirred, poured and stirred, and all of a sudden, I had the creamy texture that makes risotto what it is. And most magical of all, almost exactly 25 minutes had elapsed.
I’m not sure if it was the vegetable broth or what, but this looked nowhere near as pretty as the picture on the recipe. The vegetable broth is a reddish-brown color, not like the gold of chicken broth. I might try it with chicken broth next time, because, let’s face it, my risotto is not the best-looking thing you’ve ever seen. Probably nowhere near the best-looking thing you’ve ever seen.
