This recipe would almost certainly be best with zucchini picked fresh from the garden, but I first made it ahead of time since I had plenty of the Basic Homemade Meat Broth already prepared. The directions called for a broad sturdy pot – so I used our soup pot.
One advantage of this recipe is that it can be partially prepared ahead of time. Marcella indicates where to stop before proceeding with the remaining steps – most helpful.
Below is a photo of the ingredients – pretty basic, like most of the recipes prepared so far. I used 2 cups of Arborio rice, the most easily obtained risotto rice where I live in Eastern Ontario. We even had a package on hand. In fact all the ingredients were at hand in our kitchen. The big block on the small plate is parmigiano-reggiano cheese, pre-grating. The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of freshly grated cheese.

Vegetable oil, onion & garlic are cooked in a pot to which 4 medium or 6 small zucchini -soaked, scrubbed & sliced – are added & cooked for about 25 minutes.

The last part of the preparations is quite labour intensive. After the uncooked rice is added with the zucchini, the meat broth is added 1/2 cup at a time, with constant stirring until all the liquid is absorbed by the rice. The final step involves adding some pepper, salt and cheese

The final result, with additional cheese on the top.

I liked the Arborio rice – not something we have very often. Marcella provides helpful directions on how to make sure it is properly cooked. The overall result was OK, but I think I would prefer Monday’s Risotto with Asparagus recipe prepared by Irene. Asparagus has a much more distinctive taste than zucchini.