Shrimps & Zucchini Flowers Risotto
Zucchini flowers bring me back to my childhood memories: our grandparents had a big house in the countryside and they used to have their own veggies, fruit trees, chickens, rabbits, wine grapes … like I probably mentioned several times, I grew up eating for the most part home-grown veggies, fruits from our trees, the meat of our chickens and rabbits and very fresh eggs that my grandma used to go pick every night and bring inside still warm (something that now sounds like a dream to me).
They were farmers their whole life and – once formally “retired” (you actually never retire from farm work) – they still dedicated most of their time working our beautiful little piece of land by the house, which has top notch quality soil, especially for grapes. Everything that comes out of this soil is just of amazing quality and taste, even compared to the fresh produce that our neighbors pick from their land – that’s because of the position of the house and the amount of sun it gets. In the past, this house has been object of a very long and fierce dispute between my great-grandfather heirs and, although my grandfather was the one who was appointed to inherit the house, him and my grandmother had to go through 10 year worth of lawyers to be able to keep It (long story!).
Both my grandparents have already passed and now the house has been peacefully divided between my mom and her sister: my mom is the one who is continuing – in a much smaller scale – the “farming tradition”. No more rabbits and chickens and no more grapes (too much work and my mom doesn’t get along very well with animals) but still a decent amount of veggies and fruits. When I go back to Italy to visit I always try to go in summer time to get a taste of the wonderful products of our land (just so I get reminded of how not-really-fresh the veggies and fruits I buy here are!!).
Long story short, my mom has been sending me pictures of the dishes her and Renato (her boyfriend) prepare with home-grown veggies and zucchini flowers is one of the these – we have always been growing zucchini at home and used to bread and lightly fry their flowers (one of the very few fried things we used to eat) … my all-the-time favorites!! Nowadays, my mom doesn’t fry anymore (and neither do I) so she cooks them in various ways, from stuffing them to using them in a risotto.
This past summer I took the habit of going to the farmers market every Thursday during my lunch break (there’s a very small one just by work) and when I saw zucchini flowers, I immediately decided to buy them.
The problem with these flowers is that you need to cook them basically the same day you buy them as they tend to “die” pretty quickly. Since I don’t have time to do my cooking on Thursday or Friday and since they are not super fresh anymore by the weekend, I decided to make a risotto with them.
I added shrimps to make my risotto more nutritious but you can opt to just use zucchini flowers and maybe add more than what I used, but the taste will change completely.
One more thing – please do use Arborio rice, or you just won’t obtain a risotto. Arborio is the designated kind of rice to make risotto, any other kind of rice will work but you won’t get the same consistency.Perfect dish for a lunch, if you want to avoid carbs at dinner time!
Servings |
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- 1.5 cups Arborio rice
- 6 zucchini flowers
- 1 small zucchini
- 8 ~10 large raw shrimps
- ½ large leek about 1~1.5 cups
- Extra virgin olive oil as desired
- Salt & Pepper as desired
- White wine as needed
- water if needed
- 2 cups Fumetto fish broth
Ingredients
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- Wash & cut the leek into round slices: if your leek is very big like mine was, only use half, considering you should have about 1 to 1.5 cups of sliced leek.
- Gently wash the zucchini flowers, remove the pistil, then roughly chop them discarding the very bottom of the flower and the green stem.
- Clean the shrimps: wash them thoroughly under tap water, remove the shells, intestines, head and legs but do not trash them. Instead, place these in a pot as you will use them for the fumetto. Chop the body of the shrimps into medium or large chunks.
- Wash & cut the zucchini into small pieces (slices or cubes, both work).
- In the pot where the shrimps shells, heads, etc… are, add the zucchini slices or cubes, a slice of lemon, half of the sliced leek (no more than a half cup), olive oil (1tsp is enough for me but you can add more if desired), ¼ cup white wine, a pinch of salt, pepper & dried spicy peppers. Cover everything with water (about 2.5 cups) and bring to a boil.
- Let it boil for a good 10 minutes, then turn the stove off.
- Use a strainer to filter the broth, so that all the solid parts are retained in the strainer and you have about 2 cups of broth.
- At this point, I picked the zucchini only from the strainer and I set them on a side to use for the risotto. If you do not feel like doing this (requires some patience), you can just use fresh zucchini for the risotto rather than “recycling” the ones used for the fumetto. I “recycled” them because I don’t like to waste food and because the ones I used for the fumetto were still pretty hard and not mushy, so they were going to be of the perfect consistency for the risotto.
- Place the remaining leek slices in a large frying pan, add some olive oil (again, I used very little, probably just about a tablespoon but you can add up to 2~3 Tbsp) and let the leek sauté for 5~10 minutes adding some white wine if you didn’t use much oil.
- When the wine is all absorbed, add the rice and let is toast for about 3 minutes, then add 1 cup of the fumetto and the zucchini cubes or slices (either fresh or the ones used for the fumetto, IF they are not too soft).
- Let the rice cook until the liquid is absorbed, then add the zucchini flowers and the remaining cup of fumetto.
- Let the rice cook, adding water if needed.
- About 2 to 3 minutes before the risotto is ready, add the shrimps and let the risotto finish cooking.
- Serve with some parsley on top (I do not recommend Parmigiano with seafood!)