Wednesday 6 January 2010

Risotto for a beginner

I know it is supposed to be easypeasy to make this wonderful Italian dish but I have always been unsuccessful with making risotto. I intend to meet the challenge! With some success the following recipe was quite edible for my first in a long time attempt. This recipe seems to be enough for 4 and as we don't eat huge quantities being relatively small people, when I make it again I will halve the recipe because rechaufféed risotto is not as good as freshly made risotto. If anyone thinks I can improve then please let me know.

I sautéed one large onion and some garlic all chopped very finely in some oil and butter and waited until they were translucent, stirring form time to time. I weighed 250g risotto rice and stirred this in until the rice was coated with the oil and again waited until the grains were translucent. I kept stirring. Then I added 150ml white wine and let it bubble for 5 minutes. I stirred in 500ml vegetable stock in small amounts. As we never use stock cubes, I blended 375g of our very own pre-cooked beetroots into a purée and added water. I again kept stirring.
I added some dry roasted fennel seeds and some fancy mushrooms from a jar. I added some grated parmagiano cheese. One could also add cream! Then I transferred the rice to an oven proof dish, covered it with foil as that dish did not have a lid and baked it in a moderate oven for 15 minutes. It was delicious.

3 comments:

AcquaAlta said...

Hi there... forgive my presumption, but as I live in Italy, I thought I might be able to make a couple of minor suggestions for improvement on your risotto! So in no particular order:

If your "fancy mushrooms in a jar" were dried, they would have benefitted from being soaked for half an hour before use.

Here, if any risotto is left over, it would taste much better cold - or at least room temperature - rather than being heated up again. An alternative would be to chop up some ham or something to add into the cold rice - roll it in breadcrumbs and then make little savoury "balls".

I usually use half a cup of rice per person and then 3 times that amount of liquid per portion; so about 1 1/2 cups of water/broth per person.

Anyway, look forward to following your blog.

Happy New Year

Sweetpea in France said...

Thank you so much. I will go and buy some more Risotto making rice, try again and use the leftovers to make little savoury balls as suggested. We waste nothing!! And a happy new year to you. it's such a surprise for me to discover that some people I don't know have found my blog!!!

Sweetpea in France said...

If AcquaAlta reads this.... I can't write a comment on her blog...
Here is :
I very much like the 9 squared presentation of photos on a theme...e.g. pink flowers,, boaty things, ...
Good luck but plan well and think carefully before jumping into the deep end of the splash pool! Dreams and Reality have sometimes a very fine line of danger or of success between the two. Bon Courage et Bonne Chance!