A Postcard a Day - Mushroom risotto recipe

Good morning,

This is Sunday morning and you probably are not in the mood for food yet, but let’s talk about food. Food themed postcards I mean...

I live in Spain and the food here is typically Mediterranean. Dry cured ham, lovely cheeses, lots of varieties of potatoes, olives, anchovies, and tomato based stuff.

I like (and collect) a series of postcards by Nouvelle Ateliers who make cards with a collection of photographed  items about a particular theme. The one I’m showing you is about Spanish food. Yumm.

I love cooking and have spent many of my adult years living in Italy, where the cuisine is even better than in Spain(!) I cooked a mean mushroom risotto yesterday. It turned out really well.

Below is the recipe I use. It is from the Good Food Magazine 2006, but it is the only recipe I have found that does it the way I have been taught in Italy, so to avoid having to copy my own recipe, I have pasted this one (which is how I do it):

Mushroom Risotto

Ingredients

·         50g dried (porcini) mushrooms

·         1 vegetable stock cube

·         2 tbsp olive oil

·         1 onion, finely chopped

·         2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

·         250g pack (chestnut) mushrooms, sliced and washed

·         300g risotto rice, such as arborio

·         1 x 175ml glass white wine

·         25g butter

·         handful parsley leaves, chopped

·         50g parmesan or grana padano, freshly grated

Method

1.      Put the dried mushrooms into a large bowl and pour over 1 litre boiling water. Soak for 20 mins, then drain into a bowl. Crumble the stock cube into the mushroom liquid, then squeeze the mushrooms gently to remove any liquid. Chop the mushrooms.

2.      Heat the oil in a shallow saucepan or deep frying pan over a medium flame. Add the onions and garlic, then fry for about 5 mins until soft. Stir in the fresh and dried mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and continue to cook for 8 mins until the fresh mushrooms have softened.

3.      Tip the rice into the pan and cook for 1 min. Pour over the wine and let it bubble to nothing so the alcohol evaporates. Keep the pan over a medium heat and pour in a quarter of the mushroom stock. Simmer the rice, stirring often, until the rice has absorbed all the liquid. Add about the same amount of stock again and continue to simmer and stir - it should start to become creamy, plump and tender. By the time the final quarter of stock is added, the rice should be almost cooked.

4.      Continue stirring until the rice is cooked. If the rice is still undercooked, add a splash of water. Take the pan off the heat, add the butter and scatter over half the cheese and the parsley. Cover and leave for a few mins so that the rice can take up any excess liquid as it cools a bit. Give the risotto a final stir, spoon into bowls and scatter with the remaining cheese and parsley.

Recipe from Good Food magazine, October 2006

Thanks for visiting,

CU tomorrow with another postcard,

Lisca