Pumpkin brings bright colours and a pleasant sweetness to risotto. Pair it with shrimp for a high protein, low calorie dinner.
Time: 4/5
Risotto isn’t something that can be rushed, the rice takes however long it needs.
Effort: 4/5
Quite a lot of steps, knife work and active time for a recipe that doesn’t lend itself too well for meal prep.
Food for Thought
I like to think of food in terms of three tiers. There’s the basic food for sustenance, where form takes a backseat to function. Further up the chain is food that you eat for enjoyment, like going out to a cafe for a Saturday brunch.
Then there’s the top tier where you’re there for more than just the food, you are looking for a special occasion experience. Something like fine dining, or a really good steakhouse. Perhaps like the Michelin two star restaurants I reviewed before – Sühring in Bangkok, and Kwonsooksoo in Seoul.
Now, there are some things that are just not feasible to cook in a home kitchen. Leave the fancy knife work, hard core stir frying and exotic garnishes to the professionals. But I am a firm believer that with just a bit of effort, you can easily upgrade your home-cooked meals from eating for survival to a weekend restaurant dinner.
The difference lies in making the food look nice. After my prior deep dive exploring how to optimise the aesthetics of shrimp and guacamole on crackers, I was itching to put my lessons into practice by creating height and constructing angles.
Let’s talk about the recipe.
Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0
Dramatis Personae
Served 2.
- 300g peeled shrimp (or about 600g unpeeled)
- 600g pumpkin
- 150g arborio rice
- 500ml stock
- Olive oil, salt and pepper to taste
Executive summary
- Peel, deseed, and cut pumpkin into chunks. Toss in olive oil, salt, and black pepper.
- Roast pumpkin in a 200C/400F oven for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, peel and devein the shrimp. Pat dry with paper towels.
- Sear the shrimp on both sides on high heat, and season to taste.
- In the same pan, lightly toast the rice. Add stock and bring to a simmer.
- Stir the rice occasionally, and season. Start testing the rice for doneness after 15 minutes.
- Once the risotto is done to your liking, plate up and serve.
Notes
The pumpkin
Besides being a way to clear out my pantry and fridge, this risotto was also a proof of concept for incorporating pumpkin into my diet. Roast pumpkin has a nice toasty flavour, plenty of sweetness, and a wonderful colour. It turned out to be a great way to add fiber and volume to a meal with very few calories, so it’s definitely something to look into when I go into my next fat loss phase.
The shrimp
The shrimp has been sitting in my freezer for a long time too. We got this huge 2kg box of big shell-on shrimp for cheap, and there’s only so much Stir Fry Supreme and Tom Yum Kung I can eat before I need to switch things up. This time, I wanted to see if I could prevent the shrimp from curling up as it cooks if I made some cuts to lay them out flat, like you would if you were making shrimp tempura.
It worked when it was raw, but the shrimp didn’t stay that way after the sear. Back to the drawing board for that one.
The plating
On to the plating. The rice went in the bottom of each bowl, and I started with a cluster of pumpkin chunks in the middle. They were brightly coloured, the colour was great. Circling the bowl with the shrimp didn’t affect the height that I created with the central pumpkin mound, and it added some more geometry and visual interest.
Things were going good. The tipping point happened when I realised there was way more pumpkin left over, and I tried to fit all the chunks onto the bowl by dotting them around the rim. It looked good in my head, but with my bowls being pretty modestly sized and lacking any sort of brim, the circumferential pumpkin arrangement led to overcrowding.
In retrospect, it would be a better move to serve the pumpkin separately, either on the side or as part of another course (perhaps a Seafood and Pumpkin Soup). Or, I should get off my lazy ass and actually make a salad to go with this risotto instead of leaning on the pumpkin so much to tick the “vegetable” box for this meal.
I realise there’s a reason that restaurants serve food on big plates. There’s just more real estate to work with, and more negative space to contrast the food. But big plates take up space in the cupboard too, and half my dishes already live below the TV as things already are.
Even so, that’s another lesson learned when it comes to plating. Sometimes less is more, and I would do well to stop adding things to a plate that already looks good. As the Chinese idol goes, theres no point to drawing legs on a snake.
Now, let me take off my food critic hat. The focus for today was the visual appeal, but my inexperience in that aspect doesn’t take anything away from the fact that this was still a nutritious, filling and delicious meal. Bon appetit!
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