Just a little seasonal risotto. Simple. Effective.

Serves 4

• 280g Arborio rice
• 1 sweetbread
• 2 parsnips
• 30g dried porcini slices
• 80g Piedmont hazelnuts
• 8cl white wine
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 15g freshly grated Parmesan
• 3cl Armagnac

Plan ahead: Soak the sweetbread in brine for at least 8 hours.

When sweetbread is used as a garnish and there’s no time for slow cooking, one trick to avoid ending up with rubbery sweetbread is to blanch it several times and gradually remove the interwoven fascia. Dip it in boiling water for 30 seconds, take it out, and trim away the membranes that appear. Repeat the process with another 30-second dip, and so on. Three cycles should yield small, perfectly usable pieces of sweetbread, ready to be browned later.

Peel the parsnip and dice it finely (brunoise). Blanch it for one minute to reduce bitterness, then lightly sauté it until golden.

In another pan, roast the hazelnuts over very low heat.

Next, start building the risotto:

Sauté the rice over low to medium heat in a bit of olive oil, then deglaze with white wine. After deglazing and during the first stage of adding liquid to the rice, add the porcini crumbs to rehydrate them simultaneously. At the final stage of cooking the rice, quickly sear the sweetbread pieces for one minute, then deglaze them with Armagnac. Add them to the risotto along with the parsnip, nutmeg, and Parmesan.

Gently stir, serve, and top with the roasted hazelnuts.