This comforting vegan mushroom and kale risotto is richly flavoured with fragrant saffron and miso, and topped with fried sage leaves, mushrooms and walnuts.
150gmushrooms, (about 5oz), thickly sliced, see recipe notes
½cupwalnuts
20sage leaves
Instructions
For the stock:
Combine vegetable stock, miso paste and saffron threads in a saucepan. Heat stock until simmering, then turn down the heat just to keep it hot.
For the risotto:
Heat olive oil in a deep frypan (skillet) or large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic and celery and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes or until soft and fragrant. Add mushrooms, sage, rosemary and a grind of black pepper and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add arborio rice to the pan and stir to combine with the onion mixture. Cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes to heat the rice.
Add 1-2 ladles of hot vegetable stock to the rice and stir. Keep stirring, and add another scoop of stock when all the liquid has been absorbed. Repeat the process until all of the stock has been added, which will take about 20 minutes. A few minutes before the end, stir through chopped kale and continue cooking the risotto.
After this time the rice should be tender and the risotto should be soft but not too liquid. If the rice is not tender, or the risotto is too thick, and you've run out of stock, add a little bit of boiling water at a time to continue cooking the rice and/or loosen the risotto a bit.
Taste and season with salt and pepper if needed.
To serve:
When the risotto is about halfway done, you can prepare the toppings so that everything is ready at the same time.
Toast walnuts in a frypan (skillet) over medium heat with a little oil until golden, then remove from the pan. Add a little more oil to the pan and fry the sliced mushrooms until golden on both sides, then remove from the pan. Finally add a little more oil to the pan again, turn the heat up to medium-high and fry the sage leaves for 30 seconds to a minute, until crisp. Remove sage leaves from the pan and drain on paper towels.
Serve risotto topped with the walnuts, mushrooms and crispy sage leaves. Drizzle the hot sage infused olive oil over the risotto, if you like.
Notes
I used a combination of fresh shiitake, white button and brown mushrooms, in roughly equal proportions. You can use all white button mushrooms if you prefer. Nutrition information is estimate and does not include oil used for preparing the toppings - you decide how generous you would like to be with it here.