Sausage and Radicchio Risotto

Ingredients

• 400 g Italian sausages, skins removed
• 1 head of radicchio, shredded
• 320 g arborio rice
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 150 ml red wine
• 1.1 litres hot chicken stock
• 50 g cold butter
• 70 g parmesan, grated
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Brown the sausagemeat in lumps

   Squeeze the meat out of the skins and fry it in the oil, breaking it into rough chunks rather than fine crumbs, until well browned. Craggy pieces give something to bite on in a dish that is otherwise all soft.

   10 min

2. Aromatics in the fat

   Add the onion, garlic and fennel seeds to the rendered sausage fat and cook until soft.

   8 min

3. Toast the rice

   Stir in the rice and toast for two minutes until the edges of the grains go glassy.

   2 min

4. Red wine, then stock

   Add the red wine — red rather than white here, to stand up to the sausage — and let it cook away, then the hot stock a ladle at a time.

   18 min

5. Radicchio near the end

   Stir in most of the shredded radicchio five minutes from the end. It collapses fast and its bitterness mellows as it cooks; added at the start it would turn the whole pan a muddy brown.

   5 min

6. Beat and rest

   Off the heat, beat in the cold butter and parmesan hard, cover and rest two minutes. Serve with the remaining raw radicchio scattered over for a fresh bitter edge.

   2 min