Mushroom Risotto

Another Day another challenge! Last night I decided to try my hand at a mushroom risotto , which for those who don't know if a fancy Italian rice dish. I thought I was the rice connoisseur, little did I realize that there is a whole world of rice out there that I haven't discovered!

The process starts with sauteing mushrooms and shallots in a heavy based pot. Once the mushrooms have started to brown you add just enough water to cover them. Once the water has been added you bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for at least 30 minutes.

The next step is to strain the solids from the broth; this gives you the mushroom soup stock that is required to cook the risotto! The recipe tells you to squeeze as much juice out of the solid mixture as you can and then throw out the solid mixture.

Since I am unable to knowingly waste any food I decided that if you added a little bit of soy sauce to the mixture and sauteed it, it would top the steak we were serving with the risotto quite nicely!

If you want the flavour of the stock to intensify a bit let the stock simmer longer and boil down about 1/3rd.

Step 3 is in another large pot add a tble spoon of butter, 3 shallots and 2 garlic cloves and saute them until the shallots become clear...not brown as the recipe emphatically stated!

Now comes the fun part! Add the uncooked risotto rice to the pot Carefully stirring the mixture until all of the liquid had been absorbed. I loved the look and the texture of the arborio rice...for years I thought that all rice looked like long grain rice and that was that. Now I have a new mission...discover and try all kinds of rice available!

Back to the risotto! So once all of the liquid had been absorbed you would add about 1/2 a cup of the stock and very carefully stir the mixture until all the stock had been absorbed.

The thing I found funny was how emphatic the recipe was that you gently stir the rice, I wondered why so I googled it and found many horror stories of people being left with a pot of mush as they had stirred to vigorously and broken the grains.

The process was repeated over and over for about 12 minutes; add stock gently stir, add stock gently stir...laborious but worth it in the end!

So the final result was dished out with asparagus and steak...all in all a yummy combo. One regret though was that the entire meal seemed a little greasy...no sure why...even the asparagus had too much butter on it. Maybe next time I'll try just buying the mushroom stock and seeing if that makes a difference.