Risotto from Heaven

This is out from our planet :-)  I wanted to write a story about risotto. Well needed some photos, made the disch, and now I can honestly say: I have ever in my life tasted anything to match this. (We all deserve to be lucky atleast once in our life...)

The incredients: Risotto rice (Arborio, Vialone Nano, or Carnaroli). I named the possible brands, because a real risotto can only be made with real risotto rice. They all come from Italy, the home of risotto. I have seen all over the world dishes called "risotto", but usually they are mix of cooked rice with something else: Grap, cheating customer! Use only quality risotto rice from Italy. This time I had Arborio, vacuum packed..:-) , parmesan (never use grated parmesan, they are shit...  only use solid pieces and grate yourself), shallot ( ..normal yellow onion is too bitter, if you can not find shallots use leek), garlic, extra virgin olive oil, nice wine and suitable broth. I used shrimp shells from story "Toast  Skagen" to make the broth (stock..). You also need some butter, black pepper and salt.

Grate yhe parmesan now, since you have no time to do this while cooking...

Cut shallots. You do not have to cut them very small, they will "vanish" anyway, because of the relatively long cooking time.

Heat your stock (broth) in cooking kettle and have it available (has to remain almost boiling).

Now we start the process. Heat a generous amount of exellent, extra virgin olive oil in thick-bottom pan.

Put a nail of garlig into the hot oil. ( Here I have a horizontal cut of whole garlig. You will understand later why I did this... Normally one nail is enough...). Now the garlig flavours the oil. Take it away after some 2 minutes.

Add shallots into the oil (hope you have removed garlic :-). Fry one minute

This is enough...

Now ad rice. put your timer in 20 minutes. Star stirring immediately. Rice has to be in movement...VERY IMPORTANT !!!!

So keep movement, and fry untill the rice starts so feel transparent in vision

Add a glass of wine and keep stirring (the movement is very important, you have to keep the rice in movement, believe me please).

Wait untill the wine soaks with the rice. Then add a spoonfull of the stock you have. Do not add too much. We are not making a rice porridge, we just try to soak as much liquid to the rice as we can...

Every time when you see that liquid has soaked or vaporated like this, add a new spoonful of broth.

Some 14 minutes gone (stirring all the time), the rice grains have expanded X3 in volume. Now add some black pepper and salt. Keep adding brotch when needed and stir. (Now not all the time, but occasionally).

When your timer alerts, after 20 minutes from the start, or you have tasted the rice and noticed that its "al dente"  Add a slice of butter (non salted is the best), and the parmesan. Now stop cooking! Mix the risotto, put a lid on top of the pan, and leave it to mature (frement) for about 5 minutes.

Your plain risotto is done !  Yes, and while it matures, we have time to fry some side dish. This time tiger shrimps:

Put olive oil and butter in hot pan. Put also a cut ( one horizontal cut of the garlic opens it..) of garlig to flavour the oil. ( I used the other, smaller part of the cut for making risotto...) . Fry some 2 minutes to allow the garlig to give it´s flavour.

Add tiger shrimps (in some shops they are called "giant shrimps"). I took the chells out, leaving tails for decoration purpose. (You can fry the shrimps with shells, but then it will be messy to eat...). Fry in very hot oil about one minute.

Turrn the tigers and fry the other side... see how the colour have changed... Add black pepper and salt. After one minute everything is ready and take the pan out from the hot plate. ( You can see, that the garlic half is still in the pan. We do not use it now, but I´ll explain in future notes...).

Enjoy with risotto. I must say the following: This was not from our planet. It was so good, that I had to open a bottle of sparkling wine :-)  Atleats once I have done something great... :-)