Try this simple recipe using your own home-grown pea sprouts at any time of year!
Pea sprouts – expensively available from the better supermarkets – are extremely easy to grow; just sow the seed thickly in a tray, put it on a sunny windowsill, keep it watered, and harvest the sprouts with scissors two weeks later. Cut them just above the bottom leaf joint and they’ll resprout to give you a second crop. This recipe combines them with parsley to give you a dish that tastes of summer – whatever the calendar says.
Ingredients (to serve two)
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25g (1oz) butter
Half a small onion, peeled, cut in two and sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
200g (7oz) arborio rice
60ml (2fl oz) white wine
675ml (24fl oz) hot vegetable or chicken stock
55g (2oz) pea sprouts
A few sprigs of parsley, roughly chopped
20g (¾oz) Parmesan, grated
Lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the onion and garlic and sauté them gently for five minutes.
2. Add the rice and cook, stirring, for another three minutes. Then add the wine and cook, still stirring, for a further minute.
3. Start adding the stock a ladleful at a time, waiting until each ladleful has been absorbed before adding the next one. Stay with the pan and stir the rice every 30 seconds or so; it will stick the moment you turn your back. Keep the heat low so the stock is only just at simmering point; any hotter and it will evaporate instead of being absorbed by the rice.
4. After 20 minutes of adding stock, taste the rice; it should be cooked but still retain some bite. Once the rice is done to your liking (you may not need all of the stock), add the pea sprouts and the parsley. Stir them in, and cook for a further minute.
5. Stir the Parmesan into the risotto and season to taste with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
