A season-agnostic treat, this bacon and butternut squash risotto is brimming with sweet and green flavours making it ideal for summer. But, merely a few tweaks turn it into a hearty autumnal dish.
Butter me up
Very much a classic risotto, the great thing about this one and its combination of ingredients is that is is filling but light in flavours. But, simply altering the ingredients slightly turns it into a fairly healthy and satisfying autumn or winter filler.
You can cook it with arborio or carnaroli risotto rice. However, I strongly recommend using carnaroli. It's the naturally creamiest of risotto rices, perfect if you don't want to use those rich bomba (parmesan and butter balls) in the final stages, especially in the summer version of the dish, making it lighter and easier to digest. Conversely, deploying bomba in the winter version and increasing the bacon by about a third (6 rashers of bacon) gives it a wonderful richness that will have you sated, stretching out and snoring like a Great Dane in front of a roaring fire...
The main thing with this particular risotto—winter or summer—is that the white wine really is essential (yes, all the alcohol cooks off) and that you cook it slowly in the stages before adding the rice.
While I am delighted that butternut squash is now widely available in UK supermarkets—even 20 years ago you had to go to specialist stores or "ethnic" markets to find it—my wrath knows no bounds in the horror at crimes committed against this vegetable by British chefs, and one fat-lipped TV chef in particular. Butternut squash—zucca pluto—like almost all pumpkin or squash varieties used in Italian cooking is never undercooked. That is because generations of Italian chefs know that there is no such thing as al dente squash: it's simply not cooked, fool, and the whole point of this whole family of gourd veggies is that their unique lovely sweetness only emerges when the are fully cooked.
The point of my rant? Basically this recipe—like a lot of good Italian recipes—uses butternut squash that has been pre-cooked. And, yes, while you can prove how skilled you are by adding cubed raw butternut squash, getting the timing with the rice just right, that too defeats the purpose.
Nona and millions of Africans know that butternut squash should always be cooked in larger pieces—usually as an individual squash quartered—because cooking it in its skin prevents all those lovely vegetable sugars being poured out with the water when you drain it. In fact, if the skin is soft and tender, leave it on when serving. It's edible and a great source of fibre.
More importantly, if you're not confident in your chef mastery, using raw butternut squash might seem like some kind of crunchy-healthy-cool idea, but you run the risk that the rice will be optimally cooked while the squash is not or, conversely, the raw squash catches and burns while you wait for the rice to be ready. So, yes, use pre-cooked butternut squash.
If serving it with anything else, I tend to go for whatever simple salad seems best.
The quantities in this recipe will serve 2 to 3 diners as a main course; 4 or even 5 diners as a starter. Please note that the images are from cooking it scaled down and are therefore not indicative of the listed cooking quantities.
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Shopping list
for the bacon and butternut squash risotto
1 cup of carnaroli rice (or any other good risotto rice, more options here)
2 medium brown onions, (or red) cubed
½ a butternut squash; cut in half, cooked, and then cut into cubes
4 rashers of smoked bacon, sliced, with the rind and fat on
Approx. 400g of mushrooms (halved or cut into large pieces)
3 cloves of smoked garlic, (or raw garlic) finely cubed
Approx. 100g spinach (fresh or frozen) thinly sliced
1 chicken stock (or vegetable) cube or jelly, diluted in 500ml boiling water
2 or 3 fresh bay leaves
2 tspns dried oregano
4 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
300ml dry white wine
Salt and black pepper to taste
A little flat leaf parsley to garnish (optional)
2 tbspns of finely grated parmesan cheese or bomba (optional)
Cooking Method
the bacon and butternut squash risotto
Cook the butternut squash first. Cut in half and add to a pot of boiling salted water. Boil for approx. 5mins, then cover and reduce the heat, simmering for approx 10mins. When a fork passes easily through the flesh, it's done. Drain, scoop out any seeds of sinews and cut into fairly large cubes. You can do this up to 48 hours before cooking the dish and store, covered in the fridge, until cooking the risotto
Gently heat the olive oil in a reasonably deep pan with a lid on a medium heat. When hot, add the onions, stirring to ensure they are fully coated. Sweat, covered, for about 6mins, then add ⅓ of the wine and continue to cook on a low-medium heat. The wine should help soften the onions
Once the onions show signs of softening, add the bacon and stir in, adding a little additional oil if it sticks. When the bacon is fully sealed, add an additional ⅓ of the wine, stirring regularly. Add the smoked garlic. Stir regularly enough to ensure it doesn't burn
Add the mushrooms and fold in. Fairly soon, they should release additional juices into the pot. At this point, add the oregano and bay leaves and season with black pepper. Add the remainder of the wine and sauté on a low-medium heat until the wine has almost entirely cooked off
Push the ingredients to the edges of the pot and add a little additional oil to the bare centre. When it is hot, add the rice and stir, ensuring it is fully "toasted".
When it's clear that the rice is properly toasted, stir into all of the ingredients. Pour the stock into the pot, increase the heat and bring to the boil. Boil for about 4 to 5mins, stirring occasionally taking special care to prevent sticking on the bottom of the pot
Reduce the heat slightly—so that ingredients are at a healthy simmer—and stir. As the liquid reduces and the rice swells, you will need to stir the risotto almost constantly. Using a small spoon, lift one or two grains from the pot to monitor their progress. If the liquid appears to be boiling off too quickly and ingredients stick—while the rice is still undercooked—simply about more boiling water (about 200ml at a time) and stir in
When it seems that the rice will be ready in another 5mins or so, add the pre-cooked butternut squash, season with black pepper and mix in. Remember, this additional "solid" will mean that you will have to pay additional attention to stirring to prevent sticking. Add the spinach about 3mins later (or immediately after the butternut squash if using frozen)
When the testing of individual grains shows that the rice is fully cooked—and you're sure the butternut squash is hot and assimilated—season with salt, cover and remove from the heat
If using the parmesan—or bomba—stir in and allow the dish to rest for about 3mins before plating and taking to table
Alternatives
Only the bacon makes this dish not vegan—assuming you're not adding the parmesan or bomba and using vegetable stock rather than chicken stock. The truth is that it's delicious even without the bacon. One option is to add a chunkier raw veggie at the earlier stages—such as diced fennel—the other it to add a cup of chopped walnuts in the last 3 or 4mins. Yes, the should be added no earlier than that: walnuts can become weird and bitter if cooked too long.
Butternut squash is a bit of a weird one where pescatarian dishes are concerned. But there are two options that I think work well, more Scottish than Italian (okay, so Glaswegian Italian). One is bog-standard slices of smoked salmon, the other is the more posy Arbroath smokies; flaked. In either case, only add them in the last 5mins of cooking. They are effectively already cooked and you just need to get them piping hot.
Pairings
With this one, I tend to be seasonally led, enjoying it with white wine in the summer; a warming red in the colder months. Since I tend to cook this as a kind of quotidian supper—and, by the way, it's a hit with most kiddies—I've probably had it more often with mineral water than wine.
One wine, or more accurately type of wine, that I have noticed works very well with it in the summer—or with the fishy versions—are those almost crass Sicilian catarratto whites that veritably push their sun tans up against your tongue. Somehow, that sunburnt acidity is a fantastic counterpoint to the sweetness of the butternut squash.
The other "family" that I like for the winter version are those less fancy Barbera d'Asti reds, the ones that never wine prizes but still had that intrinsically elegant mildness without driving the "winos" into ecstasy.
Beer? Can't really say. Some gut instinct says, "No!"
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