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This is a lemongrass risotto with flavours that could have come straight out of a Thai street food market all perfectly infused into an elegant Italian risotto. Lemongrass is paired with ginger, garlic and lime leaves and gives a wonderfully exotic taste to this iconic rice dish. The short-grained rice then hungrily drinks up an aromatic broth of white wine, coconut and chicken stock ladle by ladle until we are left with that signature silky texture we all know and love. It is the perfect bed on which we serve some sweet plump clams in butter alle vongole style.
Both in Thailand and Italy, they do rice very well!
Lemongrass risotto with Italian and Thai flavours
For Italian rice dishes, obviously, we have the revered risotto with its many iterations from traditional saffron and parmesan or wild mushroom and truffle to classic green primavera risottos as well as appetizing arancini rice balls stuffed with tasty fillings of bolognese or mozzarella and Tiella Pugliese, the incredibly tasty Italian interpretation of paella.
In Thailand, rice is almost a way of life. Jasmine rice or sticky rice accompanies most meals with Khao Pad, a Thai-style stir-fried rice dish with many variations made up and down the country showcasing amazing ingredients such as chillies, lime leaves and krapow (thai basil) to name a few.
Thai flavours are often bright and spicy, sweet and sour with deeply fermented tones and zesty notes gaining Thai food its unmistakable identity. They simply transform rice, soups and stews into masterpieces. So to use these ingredients to continue to flavour rice, but using an Italian technique used in making risotto will still create this incredible authentic Thai taste but give it a completely new texture normally used to spotlight more herbaceous, earthy and umami-rich parmesan flavours from Italy.
Clams, clams and more clams
Another ingredient that both Italy and Thailand do ever so well are clams.
'Linguine alle vongole', is an iconic Neapolitan pasta dish made with not much more than linguine, garlic, peperoncino, white wine, olive oil, parsley and clams. Its simplicity just highlights the natural flavours of these ingredients almost to perfection. I say almost to perfection, as when in Thailand, I came across two clam dishes at the street food end of Chatuchak market, the world’s largest weekend market located in Bangkok, which will remain one of my all-time best food experiences ever.
One dish was stir-fried clams in red curry with krapow and the other, clams cooked in a Tom Kha-like broth, smooth, mildly spicy and aromatic full of lemongrass, galangal and coconut. This clam broth is a massive inspiration for making our Thai-style lemongrass risotto. With food such as these being so good, why not make it time for them to meet up?
Combining these flavours from Thailand and the cooking techniques from Italy, we end up with a fabulous lemongrass risotto, decadent enough for a dinner party, yet easy enough for a mid-week meal.
Perfecting lemongrass risotto with the right rice and stock
You could think that there is an art to making a risotto, however, it really only requires a modicum of care and attention with only a handful of stages to observe. As long as you don’t use too little stock, which won’t cook the rice, it is hard to use too much as you only add the stock in ladle by ladle meaning you can simply tell when its done.
Using the right rice grain is important though. An authentic risotto is made with short grain rice rather than long grain rice such as the Jasmine rice prevalent in Thailand. The best varieties of rice to use and certainly well worth hunting out are arborio rice, maratelli, vialone nano and carnaroli known as the king of rice.
The difference between short-grained rice and longer-grained varieties is due to the amount of starch they contain. Short grain rice has a much higher starch percentage, so when it absorbs liquid, it releases this starch into the surrounding sauce giving a risotto for example its familiar signature silky texture. An important aspect of creating this silky risotto is to regularly stir it. The action of each grain rubbing against each other allows the dish to become creamy. If you didn’t stir it, it would become burnt on the underside which is known as ‘socarrat’ in Spanish, which is a distinguishing feature essential in a paella which traditionally you don’t stir.
How to make our lemongrass risotto
To make this lemongrass risotto, we first start by gently frying the main aromatic ingredients of finely chopped lemongrass, garlic, shallot and ginger (or galangal), red chilli, thai basil and lime leaves in some olive oil until softened. It’s worth noting that the lime leaves and lemongrass will retain a bite, but this adds a nice texture to the finished dish. Otherwise, you can use a pestle and mortar to grind the mix down to a paste before frying.
We only want to use a low heat at this stage as you do not want to caramelise the aromatics as they can discolour your risotto. Next, we add the rice without washing the grains as you may generally do with other rice dishes. If you were to wash the grains you would remove much of the starch required to obtain the rich and creamy consistency. Stirring the rice through the oils is known as tostatura where each grain gets covered in a fine layer of fat lightly toasting them. Continuing to follow this traditional method, the next step is to add white wine, this also creates a complimentary fusion of flavours.
Once the wine has been absorbed we then add our flavoursome chicken and coconut milk stock, a ladle or two at a time until the rice is done. The finished rice texture should be firm but with no sign of hardness in the middle. If this is the case simply add more liquid.
Clams and butter for the ultimate finish
For the final flourish, we want to present some sweet buttery clams over the top. Simply add some butter to a pan to foam and throw in some drained shell on clams. Keeping the clams in their shells just looks better even if it is a little more fiddly to eat. However, you can simply remove the shells if you just want to dig in with a fork when you’re ready. You can also reserve some of the liquid from the pack of clams to add into the risotto for an added briny flavour if you wish and if you prefer a wetter finish. We’ve used a pack of raw clams (defrosted from frozen) that will take about 2-3 minutes to cook in the bubbling butter with a lid on top. You can cook clams from frozen, which will take about 7 minutes, but you won’t be able to drain the liquid off which will water the butter down.
For the final texture, a risotto should resemble what in Italian is known as all’onda, “like flowing waves” which is traditionally done by drizzling some hot olive oil over the top, here we simply pour over our foaming butter from the clams which achieves the same result.
When you are ready to serve, present the lemongrass risotto in bowls and arrange the clams over the top and serve with a garnish of some strands of lemongrass.
More risotto recipes
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Lemongrass risotto with clams recipe
Ingredients
- 180 g risotto rice such as arborio or carnaroli
- 1 banana shallot finely chopped
- 20 g of fresh lemongrass finely chopped (a few strands reserved for garnish)
- 10 g of fresh ginger or galangal grated
- 1 garlic clove grated
- 6-7 lime leaves finely chopped
- 1 red chilli de-seeded and finely chopped
- 8 g of fresh thai basil finely chopped
- 250 ml or 1 cup of chicken stock
- 400 g of coconut milk
- 180 ml or ¾ of a cup of dry white wine
- 500 g of raw white shell clams defrosted if from frozen
- 2 tablespoon of salted butter
Instructions
- Pour some olive oil into a frying pan and bring to medium heat. Add the shallots and fry for 2 minutes.
- Add the lemongrass, ginger (or galangal), garlic, chilli, lime leaves and Thai basil and gently fry for further 2-3 minutes until softened but not colouring.
- Pour in the un-washed rice and stir into the oil for 2 minutes.
- Add the wine and simmer whilst occasionally stirring until the wine has been absorbed.
- Combine the chicken stock and coconut milk. Ladle 1-2 ladles of stock at a time into the pan occasionally stirring until the liquid has been absorbed. Repeat this stage until the stock has been used and the rice is creamy in texture.
- In a separate frying pan with a lid melt the butter until foaming. Add the defrosted, drained clams and put the lid on. Cook for 2-3 minutes until all the shells have opened. The reserved liquid can be added to the risotto.
- Divide the risotto equally between bowls and present the white shell clams on top. Drizzle with hot butter and garnish with strands of lemongrass.
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