Lemon Risotto – To Grate or Microplane, That is the Question

What started out as Gadget Week is morphing into an experiment I’m dubbing Expand Charmian’s Palate. Yesterday I discovered that pears poached in black currant wine is greater than the sum of its parts. And today? I set aside my textural objections and made Lemon Risotto. Don’t get me wrong. I love lemon. It’s risotto I’m not so keen on. It’s usually over-salted and pasty. Guess I’ve been going to the wrong restaurants because my homemade version was creamy and didn’t have me downing gallons of water an hour after dinner.

To make this dish, I pitted my standard kitchen grater, which costs $2.89 at Zellers, against a new-fangled $15 microplane zester from a specialty shop. The results are in.

The standard grater produced a crumbly zest and required a bit of muscle. It didn’t yield as much as the microplane, but it was easy to control how deeply I cut into the rind. You can see the lemon is still fairly yellow, which means the zest is full of intense lemon flavour without the bitterness.

On the other hand, the microplane cut through the rind like butter. While grating took hardly any effort, the zest came off in larger strands. As you can see, it produced more rind, but the white patches on the lemon are where I grated too deeply. This zest runs the risk of being more bitter. I’m sure with a bit of practice I’d be able to shave more lightly.


Gadget Gauge: The standard grater is better for instances where you want a fine zest and absolutely no pith. You’ll work harder, but have more control.

Gadget Gauge: The microplane zester is faster and smoother but produces a stringier rind that might be too coarse for baking. However, it’s definitely a seductive tool and worth owning. I used it on lemons, but the razor-sharp plane can shred hard cheese and even carrots. Being so flat, it easily tucks away in a drawer. Definitely worth owning, but it’s more of a luxury than a necessity.

So why got to all this trouble for a dish I might not like? I’d made a very disappointing fricassee chicken with a egg yolk lemon sauce (found in a prize-winning cookbook, no less) and wanted a lemon side dish to jazz it up. Relying on my motto, “When in doubt, add booze”, I devised a wine-splashed risotto.

Lemon Risotto
Printable recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 onion, minced
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 1/2 cup white wine, dry champagne or vermouth
• 2 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth, hot
• juice of 1 lemon (2 if you like it really lemony)
• zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
• pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated

Instructions

1. In a large, heavy saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.
2. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Do not brown.
3. Add the rice and stir well to coat thoroughly with the butter.
4. Add the wine. Turn heat up just enough to simmer the wine. Stir constantly until the wine is almost fully absorbed.
5. Stir lemon juice into hot broth. Add a ladle of broth to the rice, stirring constantly until almost absorbed.
6. Keep adding a ladle of broth and letting it boil down, stirring throughout the process, until all the broth is gone and the rice has softened. This takes between 20 and 25 minutes.
7. With the last ladle, add the zest and season with pepper to taste.
8. Stir in Parmesan and serve immediately.

Variation:

• Add fresh herbs like dill or rosemary in the last 10 minutes.