Chicken & Zucchini Risotto: A Recipe Brought Home from Maisons-Laffitte
Some people collect magnets.
Others collect postcards.
Somehow, I started collecting food magazines.
I can’t even remember where the tradition began. Maybe Italy. Maybe Austria. Perhaps I simply wandered into a grocery store one afternoon and thought, This is what people here actually cook.
Since then, every place I fall in love with sends me home with two souvenirs.
Thousands of photographs.
And one local magazine.
Not the glossy cookbook translated into six languages and displayed beside the cash register. Those are lovely, but they’re made for visitors. I want the magazine tucked beside the newspapers. The one a grandmother grabs while buying milk, or someone flips through over morning coffee before deciding what to cook on Wednesday.
It feels like borrowing a tiny piece of everyday life.
Exploring maisons-laffitte: the quiet side of paris
This issue of Régal came from Maisons-Laffitte, a beautiful little town about twenty minutes west of Paris.
If Paris is the dazzling lead actress, Maisons-Laffitte is the character everyone quietly falls in love with.
Wide tree-lined streets. Elegant nineteenth-century houses. Flower shops on nearly every corner. Bakeries that perfume entire blocks with butter before breakfast. A farmers market where baskets overflow with vegetables that somehow look happier than vegetables have any right to.
And then there were the baguettes.
We started noticing something rather amusing.
One baguette.
Two baguettes.
Sometimes four.
Soon we developed an entirely unscientific family-size formula based solely on the number of baguettes people carried home tucked under an arm or balanced in a bicycle basket. Were we correct? Probably not. Did we continue our observations anyway? Absolutely.
The best surprise came later.
Fresh baguettes never seemed to disappear.
Morning, afternoon, even evening, the bakeries kept baking. Long after I had accepted that I was “too late,” warm bread would emerge from the ovens as if the town collectively agreed stale bread simply wasn’t part of French vocabulary.
Maisons-Laffitte is also known as France’s “City of the Horse.” Its magnificent château sits at the heart of town, while one of the country’s most prestigious racecourses reminds visitors that horses have shaped the town’s identity for centuries. Yet despite that distinguished history, nothing feels rushed here.
People stroll. They cycle. They linger over coffee.
It’s wonderfully walkable.
Wonderfully French.
And wonderfully difficult to leave.
Thankfully, recipes travel much better than castles.
Chicken & Zucchini Risotto
When I first saw this recipe, I almost smiled at how uncomplicated it was.
No dramatic techniques.
No impossible ingredients.
Just chicken, zucchini, rice, wine, ricotta, and patience.
As a chef, every instinct tells me to add Parmesan. Brown butter. Lemon zest. Perhaps finish with a little more herbs.
Instead…
I don’t.
I make every magazine recipe exactly as it was written.
It’s my way of meeting the cook who created it before introducing myself.
Only afterward do I decide what I might have done differently.
And honestly?
Sometimes I don’t change a thing.
ingredients
- 30 g olive oil, divided
- 300 g chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 80 g shallots, finely diced
- 250 g Arborio rice
- 150 g dry white wine
- 300 g green zucchini, diced
- 300 g yellow zucchini, diced
- 750 g hot chicken stock
- 125 g ricotta
- 5 g fresh chervil (or flat-leaf parsley), finely chopped
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
instructions
- Heat 15 g olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Brown the chicken for about 4 minutes, then transfer to a plate.
- Add the remaining 15 g olive oil to the same pan. Cook the shallots for about 2 minutes, until softened.
- Stir in the Arborio rice and cook for 1–2 minutes, until the edges of the grains become slightly translucent.
- Pour in the white wine and cook until almost completely evaporated.
- Add both diced zucchinis along with the browned chicken.
- Begin adding the hot chicken stock, one ladle at a time, stirring frequently. Wait until each addition has been absorbed before adding the next. Continue for about 18 minutes, until the rice is creamy and tender.
- Remove from the heat and gently fold in the ricotta and chopped chervil.
- Taste, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and serve immediately.
notes from my kitchen
This isn’t the richest risotto you’ll ever make.
It’s gentler than that.
The ricotta softens everything without overwhelming the vegetables, and the zucchini quietly melts into the rice instead of demanding attention. It’s the sort of dinner that belongs on a shaded terrace with a glass of chilled white wine while bicycles roll past carrying, quite possibly, three baguettes.
I’ll never know if that’s enough bread for a family of four.
But I do know this recipe will always remind me of one little French town where slowing down seemed to be part of the local cuisine.