Karen Wright: Rustling up a tasty risotto for my fussy husband
When I married my husband thirty-six years ago, he told me he didn’t like pasta, pizza or rice, in fact the only carbohydrate he liked on his dinner plate was potato, ideally in the form of chips!
Over the years I have managed to tackle his taste buds and now he
will eat pasta and pizza, but he still pushes rice around his plate – unless of course it is rice pudding, which he devours.
From time to time, I have had some success with rice when I made it into a paella or risotto and last week I fancied making risotto again. I only had long grain rice in my larder which is not the perfect rice for the dish, but I decided to use it and see how it worked out.
The correct rice is Arborio which is like pudding rice, and it is what creates the lovely creamy texture in a risotto. I had a small amount of leftovers from a gammon joint from the day before, and I decided to chop that up and use it in the dish.
This is what I did. I prepared three cups of hot chicken stock and put it on one side. Then I placed one and a half cups of long grain rice onto my cast iron pan with a little olive oil.
I cooked the rice for a couple of minutes stirring all of the time and then added a chopped onion and continued cooking, stirring constantly. Then I added a little bit of hot stock to ensure that the rice didn’t stick to the pan.
I added the chopped-up gammon and a few sliced mushrooms. I added more and more of the stock stirring all of the time. I allowed the rice to cook and absorb the stock, making sure to keep stirring which helps the rice to become creamy and sticky.
When most of the water was absorbed, I added some cherry tomatoes, some frozen peas, some seasoning and, once all the water was absorbed, a good handful of parmesan cheese. John ate his plateful of risotto and said he enjoyed it.
I thought it was great and, although not perfectly authentic, it was economical, tasty and made use of the bits and bobs which were sitting in the fridge that were waiting to be used up. Use what you like or what you have to make your own!