Hi, my name is Ben Pollinger.
I am the executive chef at Oceana Restaurant here in mid-town Manhattan.
Today we are going to be cooking
some Thanksgiving themed dishes.
We are going to start with a shrimp and pumpkin risotto, with sage and brown butter.
We are going to take an Australian blue squash
and we're going to cut it right in half.
We're going to scoop out our seeds,
little bit of sea salt,
and a little bit of fresh black pepper.
Give it a little drizzle of canola oil,
any neutral vegetable oil will do.
You're going to put the cut side down on a baking sheet,
and we are going to roast it at 400 degrees, until it's tender.
We're going to scoop the flesh out of the pumpkin,
and we're going to puree it in a food processor until its smooth.
The first thing we are going to do
is start cooking our rice.
We're going to take some shallots and mince them.
I like to start cooking the shallots with both a little
extra virgin olive oil and a little bit of butter to give it a good flavor combination.
What we are looking to do here is brown the butter up.
That brown butter is really going to give you a little bit of nuttiness.
We don't really want to brown the shallots up.
We're going to sweat them.
That means to cook it with no color.
We're going to add our rice.
We're going to cook it right here in the pan first,
and we're actually going to season it a little bit at this point
so that the salt and the pepper actually goes inside the grain of rice.
Then we're going to add white wine.
At this point the rice is going to take about 15 to 18 minutes to cook.
You are going to stir it almost constantly.
Now we are going to start with chicken stock, and you are just adding a little bit at a time.
And the way to tell when you are ready for the next addition of liquid
is when you draw your spatula in the pot
and the rice and liquid does not flow back into where you just pulled from.
Now you're ready for the next addition of liquid.
And you're only adding a little bit.
Now we're going to dice some butternut squash.
We've got 2 different types of squash in this dish.
You've got the butternut squash and you've got that Australian blue squash.
You're going to give overall deeper pumpkin squash kind of flavor.
Once your squash is peeled, you're going to cut them into sticks,
and we're going to cut the sticks into a small dice.
We're going to sauté our squash in some extra virgin olive oil.
We're going to season that with a little bit of salt and pepper right in the beginning.
Then we're going to cut some herbs.
We're got some fresh sage and some flat leaf parsley.
We're going to cut these into a chiffonade.
The next step is to clean our shrimp.
These are fresh New Orleans shrimp.
I buy them direct from small fisherman right in the Gulf.
Pull off the heads, pull back the shell with a little paring knife,
just pick out the vein.
Then we're going to dice our shrimp into small pieces.
Once you are about 3-4 minutes out, the rice is going to feel a little bit undercooked.
This is when we're going to start adding the rest of our ingredients.
We're going to be adding our diced squash,
some of our diced shrimp.
We're going to be adding our pumpkin puree which we're already prepared.
A classic risotto is usually finished with a good amount of butter,
and by adding a vegetable puree like this it'll give the creaminess to the dish
that you might get from butter.
Now we're going to add our fresh herbs,
the sage and the parsley.
And instead of finishing the dish with butter,
I like to finish this with a little mascarpone.
The acidity from the mascarpone highlights the sweetness in both the shrimp and the pumpkin.
It doesn't need to be on the heat at this point because the heat of the rice
is going to help the mascarpone melt into the dish.
The last step is we're going to make a little brown butter.
It'll become almost hazelnut in color.
Now you see this consistency here,
this is almost what they could call in Italy all'onda,
a little bit of waviness so that you can move your spoon through the rice
and you can see a little bit of the waviness.
That's the sign of a good consistency of a risotto.
Then we're going to take our brown butter
just a little but of a drizzle right over the top.
It's really going to give you some nuttiness.
And here's our pumpkin risotto with sage, brown butter, and mascarpone.
Perfect for Thanksgiving.