♧ RISOTTO BLU ♧

No synthetic dyes, wonderful colours and a recipe made 4 hands with a dear friend.

When I 1st talked to my friend Rossana about my blue risotto she was just back from Japan, visiting her parents. The photo that I showed her was not that good, since my camera could not get the actual colour of the dish, but she got very interested anyway and told me that it reminded her of something that she had in Japan. It was "zomramen"(=zombie+ramen), a grey-is /blue-ish ramen of which colour gave the dish its peculiar name.
About me I had never thought about zombies while creating, instead I was thinking about the beautiful spring colours including blue, and the "magic" trick turning the risotto from pink to blue with a sprinckle of sodium bicarbonate!
But Rossana's observation gave me the idea to post this recipe during the halloween week! So here we are... trick or treat? 👻

Me and Rossana came out with 2different versions of the dish both very delicious... and actually, in my opinion, you could also mix both!

Let's start with my own version.
If possible use "vialone nano" quality rice, but if you cannot find this quality where you live, please use some rice for risotto purpose rice.

INGREDIENTS:

70g rice per person
Water double the amount of rice
A pinch of salt
A pinch of pepper
A lot of gorgonzola cheese according to your taste (I'd say around 30-50g)
Cooked champignon mushrooms (I used canned ones)
1 cup of thinly minced red cabbage
1/3 teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate

RECIPE
Actually there are two ways of cooking rice, the 1st one is simpler, the 2nd one is more difficult. Feel free to try the one you like more. If you have rice cooker you can just put in water, rice, salt, bicarbonate and cabbage and let the machine do the cooking.

Cooking way #1

• Prepare a pot with hot salty water
• In a fryingpan put the red cabbage, mix it with the sodium bicarbonate until it changes colour, add the rice, and mix
• In the fryingpan add the hot water one spoon at a time until the rice is perfectly cooked and creamy dry
• Add to the rice gorgonzola cheese and the mushrooms and mix well together until creamy. 
• If the colour gets pink again, you can add another pinch of bicarbonate (JUST A LITTLE!) and mix again.
• Decorate with mushrooms and serve.

Cooking way #2

• In a pot put water exactly double the amount of rice, with the cabbage, sodium bicarbonate and a pinch of salt
• When the water is boiling add the rice right in the middle of the pot to create a pyramid peeping out of the water of just one inch
• Let cook for the time reported on the box then turn off the fire
• Cover the rice and wait 10 more minutes until the water has completely dry
• Now add gorgonzola cheese, mushrooms and a pinch of pepper 
• Complete as in cooking way#1

When I talked with Rossana she pointed out that crispy bacon or crispy speck would have been great on it, and also she said that she didn't like gorgonzola that much, so she proposed to use taleggio cheese or camembert cheese instead

Rossana's version:

INGREDIENTS:

70g rice for risotto purpose (Roma rice) per person

Water double the amount the rice

Salt&pepper q.s.

A lot of Taleggio cheese or Camembert cheese (according to your taste)

1 cup of thinly minced red cabbage

Crispy bacon or crispy speck stripes

• Cook the rice as in cooking way#1
• Add the cheese you have chosen
• If needed add a little (A LITTLE!) more sodium bicarbonate to fix the colour
• Add the crispy bacon/speck stripes on top and serve!

Both versions are delicious, but which one did you like most? 😊

I really thank Rossana for trying and sharing with me not only the delicious version of my recipe that she made, but also for having allowed me to use the beautiful photograph of her dish that I posted as this post cover. Unfortunately I'm not as good as she is in taking photographs and even if I tried so hard my pictures were awful and absolutely couldn't get the actual colour of the dish. You can see my pictures down here: as you see it looks grey but it is actually blue! 😂

Let me and Rossana know which version you liked most or tried here in the comments! 

As always have fun and wish you a wonderful week! 😄