Creamy, zingy Citrus Risotto is the ultimate spring dish

Because it’s thankfully almost March.

We moved into our house in December. It will be March in a few days. Our interior punch list continues and our landscape crew is still doing construction and planting. I have lots to show-and-tell you next week. In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s free post—please share it if you enjoy reading!

Following up from my dinnerware deep dive, get a load of our new plates that arrived yesterday from Kati von Lehman. Aren’t they beauties? Kati makes brown stoneware feel elegant with precise glazing and a dense clay that she works to a thickness that teeters between hefty and fine. (We decided to get 8 plates, rather than 12—how do you feel about set numbers? Let me know in the comments.)

This week, I wanted to get back in the kitchen—because our new kitchen is super fun to cook in! I made a Citrus Risotto recipe from Zuni Cafe in San Francisco that was featured in Simply Genius by Kristen Miglore. Judy Rodgers, Zuni’s chef and owner, insisted that all the fuss about having to constantly stir risotto was bunk. She said you can stir it here and there, while doing other kitchen tasks, and you can use any temperature broth you want. No need to keep a pot of carefully simmering stock next to your risotto pot.

Risotto chefs: we are now free of all those stodgy old rules! Whoopee!

While we’re at it, I’m going to add my own debunking: I learned from a born-in-Italy chef that you don’t need a deep pot for cooking risotto; a shallow braising or frying pan gives you more control over the texture.

As you’ll see in my video, I happily flouted all the rules and swerved off course with the risotto (doubled the citrus, and the onion, too)—and it turned out great. I do say so myself. Hope you’ll try it with whatever mix of citrus you have on-hand. Doesn’t this winter need a little brightness?

One-Pot Citrus Risotto

Adapted from Judy Rodgers

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup (55g) finely chopped yellow onion
Salt
2 cups (360g) Carnaroli or Arborio rice
4 to 5 cups (950ml to 1.2L) chicken stock
¾ cup (165g) grapefruit segments plus juice, from 1 to 2 medium grapefruit
A scant ¼ cup (50g) lime segments, from 1 lime
¼ cup (60ml) mascarpone

Instructions

1. Sauté the onion: In a 4-quart (3.8L) saucepan or another medium pot over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Add the onion and a few pinches of salt and cook, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, until the onion is tender and translucent, about 6 minutes.

2. Simmer the rice: Add the rice and stir until the grains are warm and glossy. Pour in about 2 cups (475ml) of the stock, adjusting the heat to let it gently simmer, then stir occasionally until it has been mostly absorbed. Add another cup (240ml) or so of stock and repeat. The risotto should be starting to look like a porridge. Taste and adjust the seasoning—the rice will still be hard and a little raw tasting. Add another ½ cup (120ml) or so of stock and stir as needed until just absorbed. Taste and adjust the seasoning again.

3. Stir in the citrus: Break the citrus sections into irregular chunks as you add them to the risotto. Add the grapefruit juice—if your grapefruit was very juicy, you may not need much of the remaining stock.

4. Beat in the mascarpone and eat: Taste again: If the rice is still quite firm, add more stock, a tablespoon at a time, and cook until the rice is still just a little firm in the center (al dente). Turn off the heat and aggressively stir in the mascarpone until the risotto is creamy and the citrus is broken down into pretty flecks. Serve immediately.

Wondering what knife I used to trim the citrus (and my fingers)? It’s Material Kitchen’s 6” Serrated Knife. I have an obsession with tomato knives and have been eyeing this one for months!

And for those seeking more spring-is-so-close recipe ideas, here are some greats from the Homeward archives:

• Cardamom Cold Brew (+ Whiskey Rye Choco Chip Cookies!)

• Tonnato Salad

• Lemon Marmalade

One of the best parts of starting a company is that you get to hire all sorts of talented people, and then watch their careers blossom. Here are just a few of the stars from my Food52 days:

• Kristen Miglore, who wrote Simply Genius (featured above), was our Founding Editor and stayed at the company for more than a decade. She also wrote Genius Recipes, a New York Times bestseller, and Genius Desserts for Food52, and now she’s working on a Montessori cookbook.

• Mayukh Sen was a standout writer who won a James Beard award for a piece he wrote while at the company, and has gone on to publish Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, as well as Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America. He also teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University.

• Kenzi Wilbur, who was our longtime Head of Editorial, opened Freaks’, a vintage furniture and design store in Hudson, displaying her exquisite taste.

• Kristina Wasserman, who headed up our best-selling product line Five Two, is now VP of Product Development and Design at Our Place.

• Leslie Stephens created Morning Person and published her first novel, You’re Safe Here.

• Ali Slagle, Eric Kim, and Ella Quittner have all gone on to write books (here, here, and here!) and work for other great publications.

• Coral Lee is another dynamo. She came to the company as a writer and was soon launching our podcast network. After she left Food52, I reeled her back in to test 100 recipes for the update of my book, The Essential New York Times Cookbook. Coral now lives in Joshua Tree, California—where, during Covid, she and her partner Trevor started an ice cream business called Nice Dream. This nice dream has expanded into a dreamland with a retail location that will include, as Coral recently wrote, “a robust matcha program, Japanese seasonal cooking menu (think onigiri, farmers’ market-driven sides, and a musteateveryday Faroe Island sticky miso salmon bowl), small-producer biodynamic wines, and a cocktail + audio-visual experience in the evening.” You can read all about it on her Substack, and then get planning your next trip to Joshua Tree!

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