Hello Lovelies, I really hope you can also feel a bit of spring coming! I’m very much looking forward to it and I’m already enjoying that daylight stays a little longer every day – especially because it provides better light for taking pictures. Since I take all my pictures with natural light, it is sometimes quite difficult in the darker winter months, because the time frame is extremely limited.
But I don’t only want to talk about photography today but rather share a new recipe with you. It’s inspired by upcoming spring, because I’m looking forward to a lot of fresh products and salads that will be more and more available. Along with pasta in all different varieties, we Frei ladies especially love risotto. Therefore I’m always looking for new combinations to spice up the classic version of risotto. One of my favorite meals is a risotto with green asparagus – I just can’t get enough of it. Unfortunately I still have to wait a little longer for it, as it isn’t quite the asparagus season yet.
There are very many delicious versions of risotto and so I’m delighted to share my recipe for sweet potato risotto with dried tomatoes and arugula with you today. I diced the sweet potatoes and roasted them with fresh sage, which we still have in the garden. What I love most about sweet potatoes is their roasting flavor that adds a little more excitement to the risotto than ‘just’ steaming them.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients
sweet potatoes:
- 500 gr sweet potatoes
- 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- paprika
- fresh sage
Risotto:
- 1 onion
- 350 gr risotto rice
- 120 ml white wine
- 700 ml vegetable broth
- 1/2 tsp salt
- pepper
- 50 gr arugula
- 60 gr dried tomatoes
- Fresh sage
- vegan parmesan cheese
Instructions
Sweet potatoes:
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (392 °F)
- Peel and dice the sweet potatoes (approx. 2 x 2 cm)
- Mix them with olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika and place them on a baking paper
- Sprinkle some fresh sage onto the sweet potatoes and bake for 20-25 minutes
Risotto:
- Chop the onion and roast it in a pan with olive oil, then add the rice to it and steam it until translucent
- Deglaze it with white wine and let it simmer for a little while
- Add the vegetable broth little by little at medium heat while stirring until the rice is soft
- Chop the dried tomatoes and add them to the rice as well as half the roasted sweet potatoes (I added the second half as a topping but of course you can also add all of it to the rice)
- Season the risotto with salt, pepper and fresh sage
- Chop the arugula and mix it into the bowl as a finish up
- Serve with vegan parmesan cheese and fresh pepper
The risotto turned out very creamy and the intense dried tomato flavor harmonized perfectly with the sweet potatoes and the nutty and slightly spicy arugula. Looking at the picture now I could also imagine roasted pine nuts to go along with it perfectly. But it was delicious the way it was.
I added some vegan parmesan cheese to the risotto, which can easily be homemade out of cashews, yeast flakes and spices and we simply love it. If this catches your interest I can write a detailed recipe down for it if you like.
And now the question of all questions: pasta or risotto…if you could only eat one of the two for the rest of your life, which one would you choose? I certainly don’t have to ask my kids, they love risotto and especially this version, but they would still choose pasta. If I really had to choose, I would go for risotto :-). But luckily no one has to choose, you only have to try this recipe soon.
Love, Verena
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This post is also available in: deutsch
