Tuesday 23 August 2011

My third ever risotto!

Yesterday at lunch, I was filled with ricey inspiration by the risotto queen, @anglikebang, so today I decided to try making risotto for only the 3rd time in all of my 33 years.  I turned to twitter for support...and found NONE.  Jeez, they're all sticklers for tradition!  So annoying.  All I asked for was a shortcut, but no.  Twitter did not deliver (well, they did not deliver what I wanted, everyone was actually very helpful) and I was told that dumping all the stock in at once was simply not permitted.

So I got home from work tonight and, despite feeling like a big pile of poo (thanks penicillin you complete git) I made risotto!  Here's how I did it.

Chicken, mushroom and pea risotto (2 servings)


Ingredients
150g risotto rice
1 small onion, very finely diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
A splash of white wine or dry sherry (I only had the latter)
15g porcini mushrooms
Regular mushrooms
Peas
Leftover roast chicken
Chicken stock (I used a Maggi stock cube)
Olive oil

Firstly make up the chicken stock with around 500 ml of boiling water, add the porcini mushrooms and leave it on a very low heat.


In a large saucepan, add a little bit of oil - literally only about 2 tsps - and very gently sweat the onions and, a few minutes later, the mushrooms.  Once they have softened, add the rice and stir so that the grains are covered in the oniony, mushroomy, not-particularly-oily-but-let's-try-not-to-be-sad-about-that mix.


Mmmmmm!  Looks good, huh?  I threw in a glug of sherry (I would have used wine but it would have been a DISASTER if I'd opened a bottle - I am not very good at drinking wine in moderation...it just tastes too darn good) and, once that was absorbed, I started adding the stock, one ladle at a time, making sure each was absorbed before adding the next.


Check out the colour on that stock!  Porcinis are ACE.  Hmmm...it would seem that I added the peas at some point during the process too.  With the benefit of hindsight, I will add these much closer to the end of cooking next time as they were a bit squashy.  So, on and on and on it went with the stock.  It was around this point.....


.....that I got incredibly bored.  Uber, massively, mind-numbingly bored.  So I sort of left it to its own devices and did the washing up and fed the cat with the occasional stir going on.  When the rice was basically cooked, I added some leftover roast chicken and HEY PRESTO!  The risotto was done.


Genuinely proud!  And, given that I finished eating it nearly 2 hours ago, it's brilliantly filling.  I'm taking the second portion into work for lunch tomorrow although I should hasten to add that this is not technically advisable.  Rice is one of the main causes of food poisoning.  However, I chilled it down very quickly (which is apparently the danger zone in terms of bad spores developing) and I'm going to risk it.  If I never blog again, you know it didn't go well, and that @darrengdwn was right when he told me that this was absolutely verboten.

Anyway, I can see risotto becoming a bit of a staple in my diet.  I figure that it's an excellent way of getting stealth vegetables into me (one-third of what I eat has to be vegetables/fruit), so it would be really helpful if you felt like commenting below to give me ideas of what to put in them.  I need variety or I will fall off this diet.  FACT.  And I don't want to do that.

F x

18 comments:

  1. "If I never blog again, you know it didn't go well" Another Fran classic! You made me laugh. Please keep writing this blog so I can laugh every day
    xxx

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  2. Awwww, you guys! This is my most dull post yet! I didn't think there were any LOLZ in this one. PHEW. xx

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  3. My fiancee makes a mean roasted veg and goats cheese risotto. I will get you the recipe!

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  4. What about sun blush tomatoes and asparagus? With a tiny bit of parmesan on top. Posh.

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  5. @Griffster77 - sounds amazing...but goats' cheese (any cheese!) is now my enemy. FatFranDoesn'tGetFinByEatingCheese

    @Mel - are you freaking insane? SUNBLUSH TOMATOES? They are SEMI-DRIED FRUIT.

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  6. There's a type of spanish rice, bomba I think, which isn't too different to risotto in the outcome but you can sling in all the ingredients and leave it to cook, thus avoiding risotto-ennui...
    I usually use it with e.g. browned chicken thighs, plus some veg and stock (and lots of garlic), and chuck it in the oven for half an hour. You could make it really low fat by stripping the skin off the chicken first.

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  7. @WalshyMK - this is amazing, amazing information. I need to get some of this in my life. Where do you get it from?

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  8. I think it's this stuff, but I might just check what's in my cupboard...

    http://www.waitrose.com/shop/ProductView-10309-10001-5859-Waitrose+bomba+paella+rice

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  9. At home, we used to make a tomatoey rice thing - not technically risotto, but similar - where you fried rice and other things, chucked in a couple of tins of tomatoes and/or stock and just bunged it in not too hot oven till done... Yummy :-)

    Do you need to be so stealthy with fruit/vegetables?
    Can't you just eat the ones you like?

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  10. @Miss Whiplash - DISASTER. I really don't like tomatoes very much. I should probably make that clear in the "About Me" section. Re the stealth veg - it's not that I don't like vegetables, I really do. It's more that 1/3 of every meal has to be made up of them, so I have to bulk things out with veg as much as possible.

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  11. The Goat's cheese in the risotto is crumbled over the top so just don't add it if you don;t want it! We've cooked it without too much stirring so its pretty forgiving as a recipe!

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  12. In that case, bring on the recipe!

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  13. Ooops - yes - I forgot about the tomato thing... I might make it for me though, now that I've thought of it...
    A third vegetables sounds feasible to me, but then I'm a bit vegetable obsessed (and probably cheat and do it by increasing vegetables and keeping the rest the same...)

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  14. Grated courgette - you can pretty much get away with putting it in anything. IT'S LIKE IT'S NOT EVEN THERE (see, stealthy? Stealthy = healthy).

    Well done Franksi.

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  15. @Miss Whiplash - it's easy if you eat a lot of fruit I think. I've eaten 3 pieces already today so am over the 1/3-2/3 ratio.

    @Shedola - nice idea. Are you coming tonight? I'm feeling very tired and a bit stressed...am I allowed to just go home? That would be rude, wouldn't it. Oh poo.

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  16. You've started a blog??? Why am I last to hear about these things??? Keep stirring next time, no matter how boring, you hear?

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  17. @Food Urchin - HELLO! Christ knows how you've missed it, I've tweeted it about 89 times. Are you seriously supposed to stir absolutely completely constantly? Can I not even feed the cat for 45 seconds??

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