Cooking thread all right.. Used to live off ?2 a day so I know about budget cooking, but I have a little more leeway now. I'll post the meal I cooked last night. I'm not really one for weights and measures, how much I use is basically just intuition or experience. Anyway.
Mushroom risotto with balsamic glaze
Ingredients:
Onions (or shallots if you're feeling flush)
Garlic
Mushrooms - the more the better. This works with pretty much anything, and I mostly use a mix, but favourite would be porcini (obviously) and enoki.
Italian rice (carnaroli if you can, arborio and vialone nano are fine though)
Butter
White wine if you're feeling rich
Vegetable stock (chicken stock if you are animal devouring swine)
Balsamic vinegar
Honey
All yr favourite herbs and spices (I don't really use many in this to be honest. Pepper because pepper in everything, a bit of salt because mushrooms need it, that's about it. If I get bored I might throw some northern european herbs in)
Pamigiano Reggiano or other italian hard cheese
Extra virgin olive oil.
If you've made risotto before you know what to do. Chop up the onion/shallots and mushrooms until they are a size that you feel like eating. If you want to add something else to the dish, this is probably the time to do it.
Melt half the buter in a big, wide pan and throw all that stuff in.
Cook it on a medium-high heat for a good while, until the onion has goldened and softened and the ingredients have imparted their flavour to the butter.
Add the rice into the pan now. Add a little butter if it's getting too dry, but you basically want to fry the rice for as long as you have the guts to, almost until it's sticking to the pan. This is a really important step for the final texture of the meal.
During this time, boil up some water, and make up a pot of stock. Leave it simmering.
Start the balsamic glaze now if you are doing it.
When you've chickened out of frying the rice anymore, add the wine if you're using it (about a wine glass or two). If not, add a little of the stock. The procedure is the same.
The method for cooking risotto involves adding the stock (and wine if using) in small amounts over a long time, whilst slowly stirring the entire time. The stock should never be swamping the rice, just add a little bit (about as much wine as you added), cook it until it's absorbed and it looks like it did before you added it, then add some more!
This part of the meal is pretty boring after you've done it 100 times before. It normally takes about 20 minutes from adding the wine or first stock to the time when you can start eating.
Get yr italian hard cheese of choice, and grate a bunch of it really finely. Then if yr feeling fancy, cut unbelievably thin shavings of it for a garnish. Like a quarter of a millimetre or whatever.
Keep tasting the rice. Eventually it will reach a texture that you find pleasant. I like it fairly al dente, but whatever, YOU ARE THE KING AND YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT.
You also want the rissotto to be the correct consistency when you reach this moment. It shouldn't be so dry that it just clumps up, but not so wet that it would need to be served in a bowl. If you drag your spatula through it in the pan, it should slowly fill in the gap your spatula made, taking a few seconds.
When you have reached this glorious moment, throw in the rest of the butter (about as much again as you used at the start) and all the finely shaved cheese. Stir that in. This will make it extra creamy and tasty. Both of these are good things.
Serve it out on plates. Put those little shavings of parmesan on if you made them. Drizzle the balsamic glaze on or around the risotto if you made that too.
Eats.
Balsamic Glaze:
Started doing this recently because I was bored of just cooking the rice. The flavours go together nicely though so hooray. It's also really really simple.
Pour some balsamic vinegar into a pan. Use about 4 times the volume that you want the glaze to eventually be. Add a little e.v. olive oil and a teaspoon of honey. Then just boil it. Just keep it on another ring when you're making the rice. Make sure it's not bubbling wildly. When it's about 25% of the volume it originally was, it should be ready. if you put a spoon in, it should be viscous enough to coat the back of it. It will take about 20-30 minutes. This stuff has a pretty strong taste, so you only want a light drizzle on your food.
Price of the meal: If you use cheap mushrooms, cheap parmesan, no wine, and miss out on the balsamic glaze, this meal is really cheap. A bag of risotto rice such as you can buy from a supermarket will feed 4 people comfortably. Even if you use everything I said, it wont cost ?10, and almost all that cost is the wine and the balsamic vinegar, most of which you will get at the end. Balsamic vinegar is awesome to have around, and you can drink the rest of the wine with the meal. Hooray!
More later maybe. Thanks for everyone who posted recipes.
