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
