INGREDIENTS
one big bunch of asparagus
half cup chopped basil
half cup chopped flat parsley
olive oil
one tablespoon butter
one cup diced sweet onion
one cup dry white wine
one quart stock (chicken or vegetable), diluted 1:1 with asparagus water to make two quarts
two cups vialone nano rice (or arborio or carnaroli)
fresh-ground black pepper
juice of one lemon
salt
half cup grated parmigiano reggiano
eggs
Cut the tops of the asparagus off and boil for a minute or two in salty water. Remove and reserve. Then boil the bottoms for about five minutes in the same water, until they are really soft. (If you are using the bigger kind of asparagus, with really tough bottoms, you might need to cut off and discard the bottom inch, but these are baby asparagus and very tender all the way to the bottom.)
Put the asparagus bottoms, the basil, and the parsley in the blender with about three quarter cups of of the asparagus water and puree the living fucke out of it.
Sautee the onions with plenty of black pepper in oilve oil with one tablespoon butter, until the onions are very soft.
Throw the rice in and continue to sautee until the rice is well coated with oil and smelling toasty, about two or three minutes.
Add the wine and cook with stirring until the liquid is mostly boiled off.
Cook the rice as usual, stirring and ladling in already-simmering broth until the rice has a good bite in the center and has released plenty of starch. The heat should be at a level where it is simmering vigorously but not violently, and at the correct level it should take fifteen-to-eighteen minutes.
Add one cup and a little more of the pureeed asparagus and continue to cook for a minute or so.
Add the asparagus and cook for another minute, with very gentle stirring.
Turn off the heat, add the cheese and lemon juice, and stir well to incorporate. At this point, you can add some more of the simmering broth to loosen it up, depending how you like it.
Plate it, making a little depression in the middle. Crack an egg into the depression, grate some additional parmigiano reggiano, and garnish with a little basil and/or parsley. After serving, stir up the egg into the risotto, which should be hot enough to cook the egg. YUM!
If you don’t want to use an egg, it’s fine: just add a couple tablespoons of butter when you incorporate the cheese in the cooking pot. This recipe is also adapted pretty closely from Urban Italian, by Andrew Carmellini.
9 comments
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Dr Becca
March 25, 2012 at 9:43 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Oooh, love the egg twist at the end! I’ve never seen that done before, but it sounds awesome.
physioprof
March 25, 2012 at 10:17 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Yeah, the egg dealio really adds richness to the dish.
WoolOnWire
March 25, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Do you yangeez get everything early? I live in a region of the UK which produces it’s own sprue, but we’re easily three weeks off seeing the first production.
That said, in a shared house of six hungry blokes I am the go- to guy when it comes to issues of risotto and also of ‘gus.
Sosa keeper for the near future, dear proffe. TNX 10^6.
WoolOnWire
March 25, 2012 at 2:24 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Aaaarg! Bad apostrophe! Now Lynn Truss wants to spank me!
DrugMonkey
March 26, 2012 at 6:31 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
cut? CUT???
You don’t “cut” asparagus for fuck’s sake, you snap it!
physiopostdoc
March 26, 2012 at 8:30 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
He is actually breakingaway on horshitte alley. His wife wrote the recipe upon his request. Or so she told me.
Isis the Scientist
March 27, 2012 at 2:56 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
So, do you have uncontrollable shits yet?
superfragilistika
March 28, 2012 at 12:11 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I cut the asparagus and tried the recipe. It was delicious. Thanks physiowife.
Lorilee Kukene
April 20, 2013 at 6:22 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Asparagus has been used as a vegetable and medicine, owing to its delicate flavour, diuretic properties, and more. It is pictured as an offering on an Egyptian frieze dating to 3000 BC. Still in ancient times, it was known in Syria and in Spain. Greeks and Romans ate it fresh when in season and dried the vegetable for use in winter; Romans would even freeze it high in the Alps, for the Feast of Epicurus. Emperor Augustus reserved the “Asparagus Fleet” for hauling the vegetable, and coined the expression “faster than cooking asparagus” for quick action.