Gortotto- risotto d'orge aux radis

I had a grand bouquet of radishes that had to be turned into a dish this afternoon. I wanted to use both the ‘root’ and the greens. Somebody suggested to make a risotto with the greens. Good suggestion I thought, so I started cooking. I did set out to use the whole plant for dinner, so I used more than only the greens in this dish. I also decided to replace the rice by barley.

Eduard renamed the dish for me after these changes. Gortotto it is, he told me. Barley is called ‘gort’ in dutch. Now you can make sense of the title of this blog post, right? The dish was a great success. Besides being very much in season, it was also really delicious. Definitely not a boring no-foodwaste-meal. Here comes the recipe and let me know if you try it out.

gortotto - barley radish

Ingredients (4p)

  • 15 big radishes with fresh greens
  • 3 big onions
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 2 tbsp ghee (or butter)
  • big bunch of fresh (young) thyme
  • 2 big cups of barley
  • 1L vegetable stock (made with bouillon cubes)
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • parmesan or yoghurt to garnish

How to

Chop 2 onions roughly and bake them in 1,5 tbsp of ghee. Add the chopped garlic cloves to the mix and stir until the onion turns brownish. Add the cleaned and chopped up radishes (I also peeled them) to the pan. I chopped them up quite roughly in 1,5cm cubes. Stir around and add the chopped herbs. Now add the barley and keep on stirring. Add the warm vegetable stock to the barley and leave it to come to a boil. Turn the heat down and leave it to boil slowly until all the water has been absorbed.

In a second you can warm up the rest of the ghee and add the last chopped onion. Let it become translucent and then add the chopped up greens of the radish. Stir fry. The greens will shrink like spinach, a bit less actually. Now you can add them to the gortotto mix, as soon as the water has been absorbed. Mix together and serve with parmesan or with a bit of thick (greek) yoghurt.

If you are in the mood, you can accompany it with a cold light beer. That’s what Eduard did. Enjoy!