BWW Cooks: Easy Ideas For Great Risotto

Risotto. You know it. You love it. It's adaptable as an appetizer, an entrée, or a side dish. It can be full of anything from lobster to leftovers. It's a great place to use vegetables. The directions are simple enough.

But wait. It's labor intensive, it's time consuming, and, if you watch HELL'S KITCHEN, then you know it's one of the two weekly pitfalls along with searing a scallop. Every season, every week. Maybe it's too scary to serve. And if it takes so long and needs so much attention, how can a restaurant get it on the table in relatively short order? And how can you avoid focusing on it for so long that without other kitchen staff, you can still cook the rest of your meal?

Risotto lovers, we have thought of you. So we're bringing you the two ways of not going insane over timing for risotto. We've decided you shouldn't be standing at the stove stirring in broth for forty minutes. Because yes, there are two ways around it - the restaurant way and the total cheat.

When we say "the restaurant way," we're talking about how Gordon Ramsay, among other chefs, sees that a restaurant kitchen gets risotto on the table at the same time as the other dishes that should be presented for that course, without making everyone at the table wait for an hour. (It just looks like that on Hell's Kitchen because, hey, reality television, and things must go wrong.) What does Ramsay have his restaurants do? The same thing restaurants around the world do: parcook the risotto first, and finish it when needed.

What you'll need to start: 2 cups of rice, 2 cups of stock, 2 cups of water, and salt. The best rice is Arborio or carnaroli, but others can work. I make brown rice risotto. The stock? Chicken or vegetable - it's surprisingly common to use vegetable stock or even just water, so it's an automatically non-meat dish, at restaurants. That way, there's always readiness for the vegetarians. You could cook the rice quickly in oil or butter to heighten flavor first, but the quick toasting isn't strictly necessary. (Try it, though, with brown rice, if you like interesting depths of flavor.) Add the rice to a pan with 2 cups each of water and stock. Bring it up to a hearty simmer and then blanch the rice for 7 minutes. Stop right there, drain the rice, and spread it out on a cooking sheet or two to cool. You're going to cook again, just like a double fry on French fries, which is not only a time saver but produces a better fry.

When you're ready to serve this risotto, put the rice in a pan with enough stock to cover the rice, and bring it to a boil until the liquid is nearly absorbed - then taste the rice to see if it's sufficiently cooked or needs a bit more stock and cooking down. Your stock doesn't need to be sitting in a separate pot on the stove at near-boiling temperatures for this to work, despite what you were shown on cooking shows. Just pour it from the container. Now, when it's just about done, add your vegetables and cook until heated (or, if using fresh peas or beans, until cooked through). Add a couple of tablespoons of butter and about half a cup of Parmesan cheese, stirred in.

That's how the pros do it, so they're not at the stove with it all evening before dinner.

But there's another method. It's not traditional at all. But it will get you delicious results. Yes, you can make risotto in a slow cooker/"crock pot".

An easy recipe for a mushroom risotto, adapted from THE EVERYTHING KOSHER SLOW COOKER COOKBOOK by Dena C. Price: Saute ¼ cup finely diced shallot or red onion, 2 cloves of garlic, minced, half a pound of sliced mushrooms (the original recipe calls for wild mushrooms but I like a mix of chanterelles and shitake) in a little oil. Add 2 cups of Arborio rice and ½ cup of stock; simmer until the liquid is fully absorbed, which might be around 5 minutes. Transfer to a 4-quart slow cooker, and add one and a half cups of stock and three cups of water, plus a little salt. Cook on low for an hour. If you're not worried about kosher cooking (or if you have access to kosher hard cheeses), add ½ cup of Parmesan. It's not perfect but it's pretty darn close. It's close enough that you won't miss standing and stirring. And it's clearly adaptable - use peas instead of mushrooms, vary the amount of shallot, and so on.

Risotto can be varied. You can see there's an easy formula of rice, frequently a bit of sautéed onion (which can be added to the parcooked recipe easily), and stock and water. Whether you cook straight through the old-fashioned way, parcook, or use a slow cooker, the proportions are about the same - you use a bit more water in a slow cooker. You can finely dice or grate other vegetables; carrot, celery, more onion, even a tiny bit of ginger for a non-traditional flavor. Consider asparagus risotto, or diced cooked pumpkin or squash for your addition.

You can add a spash or more of wine to the liquids. White wine is standard and needn't be a chardonnay, but if you're going to have a seafood risotto, a trace of dry sherry works well. If you would enjoy the flavor, and a faint pink hue, replace water or stock with half a cup of tomato juice. How about herbs? Minced parsley is an easy choice, but if you have the right vegetables, consider a faint touch of thyme. Go easy, however, on dill, no matter what your seafood choice might be, if you're doing a seafood risotto. Some flavors are simply too overpowering. On the other hand... pesto. There's little better than a risotto with pesto.

If you're making a seafood risotto, add your separately-cooked seafood (shrimp, lobster, crab, scallops) after the risotto is completed so the protein doesn't overcook. By the same token, why not a risotto of wild mushrooms and peas, with grilled chicken sliced on top?

Cheese: Parmesan is the standard, but why not Romano or Grana Padano? Asiago works, as does a very hard, well-aged provolone. If you need your risotto creamier, you can stir in a scoop of mascarpone, or use crème fraiche instead. Or go without, if you're cooking vegan, kosher-meat, or for dairy allergies. It's the starches, not dairy products, that should create the creaminess.

A good risotto should be just pourable - not dry, not soupy, but somewhat liquid, before it cools. Just because you've seen souplike disasters on HELL'S KITCHEN, don't be afraid to leave your risotto very moist (just not overwhelmingly wet). Just don't be afraid of it, though, because now you have more opportunity to get it right.

Photo credits: Freeimages.com

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