Since becoming a vegetarian again about 18 months ago, I’ve had lots of fun creating new recipes and trying lots of lovely meat free dishes. Rather than being challenging I’ve found it really fun and easy to get by without meat. Christmas is definitely a bit more tricky when it comes to meals, as Christmas dinner with the traditional turkey is off the menu. When the lovely people at Opies challenged me to create a dish using their pickled walnuts, I thought an alternative dish for the festive season would be the perfect place to start. I decided to try my hand at a vegetarian risotto and I am so happy with the result.
I decided to make a wild mushroom risotto, with the addition of some delicious pickled walnuts. I’ve tried the walnuts before as part of a cheese board, which I featured on the blog last year. But this was my first time actually cooking with them. They added a lovely extra flavour to the dish and I can’t wait to try them in more meals in the future.
Vegetarian Wild Mushroom and Pickled Walnut Risotto Recipe
Allow about 45 minutes to create the recipe, which serves 4 people.
Ingredients
Vegetable stock
2 tbsp Olive oil
1 Onion chopped
1 tbsp Fresh Rosemary Leaves chopped
100g Fresh Wild Mushrooms
40g Dried Wild Mushrooms
250g Arborio Rice
4 Pickled walnuts
3 tbsp Grated Parmasan
Fresh Parsley
How to Make
Soak the dried mushrooms in a bowl of 300ml boiling water and leave for 20 minutes.
Mix vegetable stock in 1 litre of water and place to one side.
Heat olive oil in a pan. Add the chopped onion and cook until soft, then stir in the rosemary and fresh mushrooms.
Drain the liquid from the dried mushrooms and add it to the stock. Stir the mushrooms into the pan.
Add the rice to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes.
Chop the walnuts and add along with a little of the liquid
Add a ladle full of stock to the pan and stir until it has been absorbed. Keep adding a ladle at a time, stirring continuously until all the stock is absorbed. this should take around 25 minutes.
Stir in two table spoons of parmesan and a tablespoon of shopped parsley.
Serve, sprinkle with parmesan and top with fresh parsley.
The risotto tasted absolutely delicious and was perfect for a cosy winter day. All the ingredients were really easy to find in my local supermarket. Opies pickled walnuts are available in most supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Asda and Waitrose. For more ideas check out the Opies website.
*Thank you to Opies for sponsoring this blog post and sending me some pickled walnuts to try. All opinions and recipes are my own.
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