Pancetta and bean risotto

A cookbook with a gimmick of recipes that only require four ingredients sounds like a great idea, and it's not a bad one. But it cheats. Today's recipe is an example. In order to cook the same meal, I need six ingredients because I''m not going to buy "herbed broth" when I've got perfectly wondrous stock of my own on hand, so I added in some herbs. And the recipe in the book is clearly staged with a Parmesan garnish, which of course you'd like, but it's not mentioned because that would wreck the math. But hey, it's still only six ingredients and pretty fast to fix.

Pancetta and bean risotto
Adapted from "The Cook's Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking" by Joanna Farrow
I paid all of $7.98 for it years ago, but now you can buy it for a penny.

Ingredients
6 ounces pancetta, diced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
6 cups broth
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary or herb of choice
2 cups lima or fava beans
Parmesan shavings (or grated) for garnish

Method

Heat broth to a simmer; keep warm. In a medium saucepan, brown pancetta. Stir in rice and cook, stirring for a few minutes.  Add a ladle of broth and rosemary. Keep stirring and adding more broth when the liquid is nearly absorbed.

Cook lima or fava beans. Add to risotto when all the liquid is absorbed and it's reached the creamy stage. Served top with Parmesan.

Rating: Fine enough weeknight meal. I couldn't find fava beans in the store so I substituted limas, for better or worse. It makes a fairly starchy dish, but it's still tasty with pancetta and risotto creaminess.

 

Oh, and if you haven't seen the latest foodie kerfuffle, check out this report on an investigation in to the facts behind the farm-to-table claims on many menus. Love this quote:

"Many of those local greens misted with unicorn tears are something else entirely."