Peasant food
British people seem to have a certain fondness for peasant food. We like our shepherd's pie, and our fish and chips. I used to go out with an Indian woman who was always surprised at the reaction of her British friends to her Tarka Dhall - basically lentils and rice - because it's a cheap dish that's looked down on in India, but here we all love it. The same goes for foods closer to home; the Swiss are baffled by the way that fondue was a bright but fleeting fashion here. Over there, it's fed farmers for centuries. Risotto, here, is an upmarket restaurant meal; Italians cook it when they're skint.
These are just examples I've seen on my travels, if you've got more please do share on the comments section!
Right then; let's talk about risotto. I love risotto and I eat it a lot towards the end of the month because it's tasty and cheap. People are a bit scared of it, generally, and think it's hard to make. It's not. It's just that when it does go wrong, it goes badly wrong and can't be rescued. Follow these tips and you'll be fine.
First of all, I'll teach you how to cook a basic risotto, then we'll move on and add different things to pad it out and flavour it.
Most rices can take pretty brutal treatment - brown rice, which I also use a lot, can simply be thrown into boiling water and forgotten about for half an hour while you cook the rest of the meal. The difficulty with risotto rice is not that it needs anything complicated, but that it needs a lot of attention. Other rices will be served as carbohydrate along with something else that's exciting and tasty but risotto rice is the centre of the meal so it stands to reason that it needs a bit more care. It doesn't just cook to order in a pan of boiling water; it absorbs other flavours and turns out differently every time.
Use a non-stick pan. I don't have time for purists with their stainless-steel pans; I think teflon is a gift from the gods. Remind me to send ninjas round to murder my ex-housemate for scouring my beautiful Tefal pan.
Keep the flame lowish. Something will burn or stick (or both) if you go over half-power on your hob.
It's a good idea to get everything ready before you start - with most recipes you can start something off then go back and prepare the next thing but with risotto you won't have time because you need to give all your attention to that pan. So, just for once, I'm going to break with my own convention and give a list of ingredients.
Butter.
Rice. I use a mug to measure portions. One person, rice up to the bottom of the handle. Two people, up to the top of the handle. A full mug should be enough for four. Strange but true.
White wine. A glass for the pot, a glass for the chef.
Vegetable stock. I favour Oxo - a cube of Oxo dissolved in about a pint of boiling water from the kettle should be plenty. Use a pint glass nicked from the pub if you don't have a measuring jug.
Melt a generous knob of butter in the pan. Add your risotto rice and stir until it's absorbed some of the butter. Don't turn your back on it or the rice will burn and all is lost. (Last time I made risotto my phone rang at this point and despite the fact that I had the flame down low the rice was burned by the time I'd got rid of the caller. Lesson learned: don't answer the phone when you're in the middle of something important.) When it looks like the rice has absorbed as much butter as it's going to, add some white wine and let that reduce down, stirring all the time. When the wine has almost gone, add just enough vegetable stock to cover the rice. Keep stirring. When that's reduced down, add more stock; again, just enough to cover it. Keep doing this until the rice is done - it puffs up in size quite quickly when it's ready so it should be obvious. About five minutes before the end of cooking time (given on the rice packet - normally about 20-25 minutes), grate in some parmesan.
If we're going for pure Affordable Food, skip the wine and parmesan. Ooh - and add cream if we're feeling flush.
It's important to understand why we have to give risotto rice so much attention. Normal rice (and pasta, and veg) cook in boiling water and we just drain the water off when they're done. But the liquid in a risotto isn't just a medium for cooking the rice - it must be absorbed by the rice to give it its flavour. Which means a low heat, not boiling, and lots of stirring because with such a small amount of liquid present you risk it all boiling off and the rice sticking to the pan in a nasty black mess. Why can't you just pour all the stock in at once, rather than adding it a bit at a time? Because you'll probably put in too much, and what gets left over is pretty icky and gooey. What we're aiming for is for the last of the liquid to boil off juuuust as the rice is ready. Easy, as long you keep an eye on it and stir lots. Just don't turn your back on it for a second.
So, we've made our perfect, plain risotto. Now, what to add?
Pint nuts are good. Pine nuts are excellent, in fact. They're also expensive (three times more expensive in Waitrose than they are in my local independent, so shop around) so don't regard them as a necessity. They need a gentle frying or toasting to get them to their best, so put them in the butter right at the beginning along with the rice. They'll burn as easily as the rice, so be careful.
Onions and mushrooms are good, and cheap. Any vegetable that cooks relatively quickly can be used too. Leeks, frozen peas, mangetout..... whatever floats your boat.
I like to steam some asparagus spears and serve them over the top of a risotto, but they're pretty expensive too so they're an optional extra.
I can't imagine a risotto that works well with meat, but fish is a good ingredient. Chuck in a tin of tuna - that works well.
Seasoning? Whatever you like. Personally, I don't use much salt but I love black pepper; and I'm completely addicted to basil. Each time you go shopping, buy one jar of Schwartz herbs and use it the next time you cook. Play with them until you discover what you like - maybe you'll prefer oregano with chicken and basil with lamb and mint with tomato, or whatever.
Anyway, I had risotto today - which is why I've posted about it - and was in a skint-but-adventurous mood so I had a bit of a play. If you're going to get into the habit of cooking every day you've got to have fun with it; I don't say this often enough but enjoying it is the key to good home cookery. Anyway, it's the end of the month so I'm skint, and I'm trying to run the freezer down so that I can defrost it, so I'm just eating what's in store at the moment. I was in the mood for risotto, and in the mood for playing with my food, so here's what I did.
Cooked the risotto as above, with wine and parmesan (cheap cooking wine from the offy, parmesan a gift from an Italian friend).
Pine nuts - check. Onions - check. Mushrooms - check. I have a good store cupboard.
Tuna risotto's nice, but I haven't got any tuna. I have got a tin of anchovies so let's chuck them in.
This doesn't look or taste very exciting yet. Let's have a rummage.... Mmmm! Pesto! There was a jar of pesto I'd forgotten about at the back of the cupboard. I love pesto and after all risotto is great with basil and pine nuts - and what's pesto made of? Let's chuck a couple of spoonfuls of that in.
It didn't look that good when I served it up. (I will, in future post pictures of the recipes I post, but this wasn't a good time to start). It looked like a gloop of green porridge, in fact. That's partly because I broke one of my own rules and left it to itself for five minutes while it was cooking - and of course it ran dry and stuck to the pan. Not too badly, but enough to make it a bit... unappetising. To be honest it didn't taste that good either. It was spectacularly salty (I hadn't added any salt so it must have come from the anchovies) and there wasn't any of the pesto goodness I'd been expecting.
So, a disappointing meal. But I'm glad I did it - because you've got to experiment and branch out sometimes, or you'd never learn anything.
