How to get the best of Naples
My top 5 of things to explore in Napoli
Risotto recipe with fava beans and candied lemon
Risotto alle fave e limone caramellato
This risotto recipe with fava beans and candied lemon may sound like a strange combination of sweet and savoury. But it works amazingly well.
The extraordinary thing about this recipe is that it uses candied lemon peel to spice up rice and beans. An interesting combination that works amazingly well and lifts an otherwise ordinary dish a step up the culinary ladder.
Making the candied lemon may seem like a lot of trouble – followed by heavy duty cleaning – but actually it only took me 10 minutes, and it made the meal much more fun and interesting.
Ingredients
1 lemon peel
2 tbsp sugar
320 g Arborio rice
350 g fresh shelled horse beans/fava beans
olive oil
100 g parmesan
salt, pepper, oregano
For the broth (can be replace by ready-made vegetable stock)
2 carrots
2 onion
2 shallots
½ fennel
laurel, parsley and
Preparation
Melt sugar and 2 tbsp water in a saucepan
Wash the lemon and cut the yellow zest into strips.
When the sugar is brown and smoky mix in the lemon zest.
Place the candied lemon peel on a piece of parchment paper to cool.
To make the broth peel shallots, onion, carrot and fennel and chop coarsely.
Boil the vegetables for 30 minutes with laurel, salt and parsley.
(If you use ready-made broth, bring it to the boil to make it ready for use)
Fry the rice in olive oil.
Stir and top up with boiling broth (without the vegetables) continuously for 12 minutes.
Add shelled horse beans and continue stirring and adding more broth for another 7 minutes until the rice is tender. The texture should be a little runny.
Grate parmesan and mix it with the risotto.
Top with candied lemon peel and fresh oregano.
Other rice recipes
Recipe rice balls – Italian arancini
Making mozzarella at a farm dairy near Altamura
Making mozzarella at a farm dairy near Altamura: There are more than 400 different cheeses in Italy. Most of them are still made at small farm dairies. And there’s nothing like the taste of fresh mozzarella.
Where in Italy?
Where in Italy quiz: Test your knowledge of Italian towns and places. Post a comment, if you recognize the destination from the photo and the three hints.
For general entertainment and with inspiration from Sophie’s World and Budget Travel Adventures, I’m introducing a ‘Where in Italy’ quiz, where you can test your knowledge of Italian towns and places. All you have to do is post a comment, if you recognize the destination from the photo and the three hints.
- Though irresistibly charming and gifted with more historic sights than most other places in Europe, this city stands out as a black sheep in the Italian urban family.
- The city is credited for the invention of a number of red, white and green dishes like pizza and caprese salad.
- The city has the only cluster of modern skyscrapers in Italy (as can be seen if you look very closely at the photo taken during take off from the city’s central airport).
Comment view will be delayed for 24 hours and among the correct answers a ‘winner’ will be selected. The ‘prize’ is a short presentation of you, your blog and twitter profile on this page and on Italian Notes’ Facebook.
And the winner is….
All answers to this week’s quiz pointed to Naples, which was correct and goes to prove the great perceptiveness of the readers. Impressing:) The many correct answers make it hard to pick a winner, although the contribution from @angelsdemonstou might be considered to take the lead for observations of the L-shaped autostrada and the San Paolo stadium. Still, in all fairness, I’ve closed my eyes and moved the cursor around till it happened to land on Eugene Martinez known on twitter as @tgiflorence.
Eugene has a degree in art history and graphic design from New York University and thirty years of experience in Tuscany, He shares his passion for art, history and cooking by blogging on tgiFlorence and organizing itineraries and cooking classes around Florence.
Congratulations to Eugene and big thanks to everyone who took the time to join in the fun and post an answer. It’s been really interesting to explore your blogs and homepages and I can only encourage others to do the same.