Grilled Veggie Risotto

So last night it was hot...I hope all of you who are hoping for hot weather are happy because I am not. I'm a very comfortable at 65 degrees type person, well mother nature missed that weather this year so in an effort to cheer myself up last night I made a tasty treat...Grilled Veggie Risotto. It was pretty simple, that is as long as you are familiar with making risotto, which isn't difficult just takes some time and attention. I started with a green and yellow squash and a bunch of small asparagus. I sliced the ends off the squash and then sliced length wise so they would fit on the grill better, then prepped the asparagus by snapping the bottom off where it naturally broke and cutting the rest to that height. Now if you want to add other veggies you can, but these grill up nice and looked good in the store. I drizzled some olive oil over them and sprinkled with Grey Salt (a new item I picked up, check out the blog post on Florida Spices tomorrow) and put on a medium hot grill. My grill was at about 400 degrees when I put them on and I turned it down to low so they grilled at about 300 for 5 minutes or so per side of squash depending on how thick you slice them. If you can pick them up and they are limp in your tongs then they are done. The asparagus should take 5-7 minutes depending on how big around the stalks are. For the risotto there are a lot of different ways to do this, but this is the way that works best for me. Heat over low heat in a small sauce pan 3 cups of chicken broth, or a combination of white wine and veggie broth. If you use a combination I wouldn't go more than 1 cup of wine and 3 cups of broth. Make sure the wine isn't a sweet wine, look for a crisp white. In a larger sauce pan heat up 1-2 tsp olive oil (you can add butter too if you want, but leaving it out keeps it lighter), dice up a 1/2 a shallot and add to the Olive oil and sweat until translucent, about 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of Arborio Rice and stir constantly to brown the rice without burning it, that would be very, very bad. Brown the rice for 2 minutes then add a couple ladle fulls of the warmed broth and stir, leave on medium heat so the mixture continues to cook as it is absorbing the liquid. (warming the liquid will help the mixture cook quicker, if you don't want to or forget to warm it that is ok, you can use straight from the box it will just take longer to cook). Continue cooking until all liquid is absorbed. Take the grilled veggies and let them cool enough to be able to handle, coarse chop them along with some fresh parsley and oregano. Stir the veggies, herbs and freshly grated Romano cheese into the risotto. You probably won't need to add any additional salt because of the salt on the veggies and cheese but you can and add any additional pepper to taste. Grilled Veggie Risotto 1 cup arborio rice 1/4 shallot chopped 3 cups chicken stock/wine combination 2 small squash 1 small bunch of asparagus 1 small bunch of parsley and oregano olive oil grey salt (or any salt you have) fresh grated Parmesan cheese Stay tuned for more information the grey salt featured here...