Recipe Research

Recipe Content

Mushroom Risotto with Peas

Description: I've always wanted to make my own mushroom risotto ever since studying abroad in Florence. I love the dish for its earthy and savory flavors combined with a creamy sauce.The slow cooking time of the broth and the number of aromatic make the recipe somewhat hard to follow. I hope structuring a website can help with the process.

Ingredients

Yield: 6 servings

6 to 7cups chicken, vegetable or garlic broth or stock, as needed

Salt and black pepper

2tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

½cup finely chopped onion, or 2 shallots, minced

¾ to 1pound wild mushrooms, cleaned if necessary and torn or sliced into smaller pieces if thick (small wild mushrooms should be left whole, mushrooms like maitake can just be separated into small pieces)

2garlic cloves, minced

2teaspoons fresh thyme leaves or chopped sage

½cup dry white wine, such as pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc

1cup frozen peas, thawed (optional)

2tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

½cup gwerated Parmesan cheese, or a mixture of Parmesan and Pecorino Romano

Instructions

1. Bring stock or broth to a simmer in a saucepan, with a ladle nearby. Make sure stock is well seasoned, and keep it simmering on the stove.
2. Heat oil in a wide, heavy nonstick skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Add onions or shallots and cook gently until just tender, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Turn up heat and add mushrooms. Cook, stirring, until they begin to sweat, about 3 minutes, then add garlic and thyme or sage. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Season mushrooms with salt and pepper and continue to cook over medium heat until they are soft. Taste and adjust seasoning.
4. Add rice and stir until grains begin to crackle. Add wine and cook, stirring, until wine is no longer visible in pan. Stir in enough simmering stock to just cover the rice. The stock should bubble slowly. Cook, stirring often and vigorously, until stock is just about absorbed. Add another ladleful or two of stock and continue cooking, not too fast and not too slowly, stirring often and adding more stock when rice is almost dry, for 15 minutes.
5. Add peas, if using, and continue adding stock and stirring for another 10 minutes. Rice should be tender all the way through but still al dente. Taste now and adjust seasoning.
6. Add another ladleful or two of stock to rice. Stir in parsley and Parmesan, and remove from heat. Season with black pepper and serve right away in wide soup bowls or on plates.
7. Advance preparation: You can begin up to several hours before serving: proceed with the recipe and cook halfway through Step 4, for about 10 minutes. The rice should still be hard in the middle when you remove it from the heat, and there should not be any liquid in the pan. Spread it in an even layer in the pan or on a baking sheet and keep it away from the heat until you resume cooking. 15 minutes before serving, resume cooking as instructed.

Source

This recipe by Martha Rose Shulman is published on New York Times cooking.Here's a link to the original page.

Sample Imagery

Recipe Websites

Half-Baked Harvest

This site makes effective use of images to appeal to viewers' appetite. The system of typography, however, can be much improved by using a less decorative display serif and paired with a sans-serif body text. The search options can be referenced: "type of meal, by method, diet specific, holiday + seasonal, drinks, cuisine" if I were to build a more complete recipe site.

Venga Richa

This site has more communicative individual recipe pages - including a checklist for ingredients (a clickable list where items can be checked off), and a recipe card that gives a brief of the prep time, cooking time, serving size, cuisine, etc. of the dish. There are also links to similar dishes. One flaw is that images are too big and prevents smooth scrolling /reading.

NYT Cooking

Regrocery Regrocery uses bold and appealing colors on a clean, minimalist interface design, a combination that plays up the appeal of their products and optimistic lifestyle. The appetizing design is further helped by easy navigation and the use of typography. The combination of a playful bold vertical display letterform successfully distinguishes itself from the smooth flow of horizontal body copy to create hierarchy.

International Health Report 2020The International Health Report 2020 has a fun layout with text bubbles and stylized pop-up windows. It is engaging with its combination of data visualization, interactive storytelling, and modern typography. The information is accessible, although the text competes a bit too much with each other.

Reading Machine Reading Machine is an experimental web design project that combines sound with bits of text to create a poetic digital reading experience. The site's structure is simple and navigable, with a main menu that links to individual pages for each piece of writing. I thought a similar parallel structure could be created for recipe websites.