When you hear “family recipe,” what food springs to mind? My childhood memories of food are mostly connected to Italian dishes. My dad, the son of immigrants from northern Italy, regularly made spaghetti with tomato sauce, lasagna, or some other dish starring pasta. After I grew up, moved away, then came home for visits, he adjusted the recipe to eliminate the meat. While he never fully understood my vegetarianism, he accepted it. Maybe even embraced it. I recall arriving home for a visit once to find him in the kitchen where he eagerly offered, “I just made vegetarian lasagna. Want some?”
When I make those same foods now, I think of my father. Not one to leave the pot unattended, he’d stand over it stirring, slowly stirring. Then more stirring. Another dish he made so often that it became a family joke was polenta, sometimes with tomato sauce, sometimes with cheese. I joked that there was no holiday in our house that did not include polenta. As I kid, I hated it. As an adult, I like it (with red sauce).
Even though he was Italian through and through, my dad never visited Italy. He talked about it. He knew the language and shared stories from his mother. He listened to my descriptions of the Italian villages and cities I visited. He asked about the people, the weather, the food. He wanted to know how they served their polenta. He was curious, but he was not a fan of long airplane rides (or being too far away from home).
Without realizing it at the time, I brought him a gift from Italy a few years ago. I had arrived at my parents' house in Michigan for Thanksgiving with a bag of Arborio rice in my suitcase and a plan to make pumpkin risotto. At Thanksgiving dinner after his third (his fourth?) helping of risotto, he turned to me and said, “This is good. Who taught you to make it?”
I had taught myself after eating risotto in a trattoria in Tuscany and never forgetting its creamy orange richness. It felt good to bring this little offering to my dad from his homeland. What a joy to see him eat so much! My dad died nearly a year ago. Now every time I make pumpkin risotto or lasagna or spaghetti sauce, I feel closer to him as if communing with him through the steamy vapors on my stove. I stir and stir, knowing he’d be happy to sit down to this dish with me. He’d compliment it (even if I messed it up).
Recently while eyeing pumpkins at the farmers’ market, my husband said, “I really like your pumpkin risotto. We should have that again.”
When fall is in the air and it’s a lazy Sunday night at home, there’s something especially joyful about having a pot of pumpkin risotto burbling away on the stove. I secretly call it Therapy Risotto because it’s a dish you have to tend to, lazily stirring in the broth one cup at a time until it’s all absorbed, the starch released, and it reaches that magical creaminess. While that’s going on, I can reflect on things like my dad and his way of cooking and how food is such a strong conduit to memory and how Sundays are best when there’s something to look forward to on the stove.
I encourage you to go out and hunt down a pumpkin and stir up some memories of your own. Having just discovered Hokkaido pumpkins, which are everywhere in Munich's markets, I can highly recommend them. Here are some of the recipe's trickier steps. The full recipe is at the bottom if you'd like to cut/paste/print it for your own use. And if you do make it, please let me know using the Questions? or Submit button at the top of my blog page.
First, a bit on those Hokkaido pumpkins: Cultivated for ages in the Far East, they’ve become increasingly popular because they’re nutrition bombs, full of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, beta-carotene, vitamins A, B, C. And they’re easier to cut than the larger pie pumpkins often used for cooking.
I adjusted this recipe, which originally called for the pumpkin to be peeled and steamed. Peeling a pumpkin has always seemed impossible and dangerous to me. So I cut this one in half, rubbed both halves with olive oil, baked it, then easily scooped out the creamy flesh.
Then just mash the pumpkin with a potato masher.
As you’re cooking the risotto and adding the broth, it will start out soupy. But that will change soon enough.
You’ll know it’s ready when it’s thick and also a tad loose.
If you want to eat it the real Italian way, always, always serve it in a shallow bowl (never a deep bowl or plate), grate fresh parmesan on top, and eat from the outside of the mound inward so it can cool as you go.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound fresh pumpkin or butternut squash (about 1 1/3 cups cooked)
2 medium white onions, finely diced
3/4 cup dry Riesling
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
About 1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
1 teaspoon salt
7 cups vegetable broth
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice (about 11 ounces)
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (optional, but it adds nice color)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Cut pumpkin top off, cut in half, brush with olive oil, and bake cut side down at 375-400 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour. Scoop and mash flesh. (Can use canned pumpkin, but fresh is far better.)
Heat the oil in a nonreactive medium saucepan. Add half of the onions and cook over moderately high heat, stirring frequently, about five minutes. Add the mashed pumpkin. Stir in the wine, nutmeg, white pepper and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 12 minutes. Remove from the heat. Transfer to a small bowl and let cool slightly.
In a medium saucepan, bring the vegetable broth to a boil over moderate heat. Reduce the heat to low and keep the stock hot.
In a nonreactive medium saucepan, heat 2 1/2 tablespoons of the butter until it begins to sizzle. Add the rice and the remaining onions and cook over moderately high heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the onions are translucent, about 7 minutes. Immediately stir in 1 cup of the hot stock and cook, stirring constantly, until all of the liquid has been absorbed, about 2 minutes.
Reduce the heat to moderate and gradually add 3 more cups of the hot stock, 1 cup at a time, stirring and cooking until each cup is almost absorbed before adding the next, about 15 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin puree. Continue adding the remaining 3 cups stock, 1 cup at a time, stirring and cooking as above, until the rice is tender, about 15 minutes longer. The risotto will be quite loose. Stir in the parsley and the remaining 2 1/2 tablespoons butter.
Spoon the risotto into 6 warmed soup plates and sprinkle the Parmesan on top. Serve immediately.
