Risotto Made Easy

One of my favourite meals is risotto.  I could quite happily eat it every day, and if it's a special occasion, hubby knows it's a safe bet to make it for me, and I praise him endlessly.  I have never tackled making it myself, because I always felt like it took too much fussing about the stove, standing and stirring it forever.  Not so anymore.  I spent some lazy time today reading risotto recipes out of my Christmas present from hubby - La Cucina and then decided to have a crack with both help from Cousin and a bit of direction for hubby, who after I had carefully read a few recipes to get a feel for it, told me HIS surefire way of making risotto.

To start with, Cousin finely diced half a large brown onion, then chopped up a big handful of mushrooms roughly while I carefully diced up about 100 - 150g of spec (but you can use bacon if you can't get spec).

Once everything was ready, I put a good slice of butter in a medium sized butter, along with a big slug of olive oil (how I'll repeat this sans recipe or hubby, I have no idea).

Once the butter and oil was melted and bubbling, I popped in the onion, spec and a heaped teaspoon of minced garlic and browned it all off. Then I added a cup of arborio rice and stirred until the rice was coated in oil and had gone translucent.

The next step is to add liquid.  To start with, I added half a can of tomato paste and a slug of water (which I used to rinse the tomato paste can).

Hubby instructed me to stir the rice every thirty seconds or so, which I did.  I was a bit dubious about the whole 'stir regularly until the liquid is absorbed' line, but I have to admit, you could DEFINITELY see when the liquid was absorbed and the rice went from looking soupy to starting to look dry and gluggy.  At that point, hubby poured in probably a cup and a half of red wine.

 Once the risotto had cooked down again, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a little bit more water and kept on stirring.

Surprisingly enough, by the time the can of tomatoes had reduced into the risotto, the risotto tasted 'right'.  The rice had the right consistency and I was nearly there!  To finish it off, I stirred in a load of regular tasty cheese, and the same again in parmesan.  Once it had melted, the risotto went all gooey and awesome.

The finished product!  Hubby bbq'd some lamb steaks and Cousin made a delicious salad to go along with it. Team work in the kitchen certainly makes preparing meals a lot more fun!

End result?  My risotto was probably a bit more liquid-y than 'real' risotto, but gee it tasted great and it was SUPER easy.  I was amazed.  All you need is a bit of time.  I will DEFINITELY be making this again.  And who knows?  Maybe next time I'll use a real recipe.