Betty Does Risotto & a BSD

Giada timed her risotto challenge perfectly with the arrival of my May issue of Cooking Light, as it had a whole feature on spring risottos and how to cook them perfectly. As I perused the risotto recipes in the issue, one immediately caught my eye, and I knew just what I had to do: make the bacon and wild mushroom risotto with baby spinach. Clearly, it was my destiny.

I scanned the ingredient list and decided to make a couple substitutions. Here is the recipe for your reference. Um, why type it here when Cooking Light has it online? I’m a busy girl.
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1981765

Substitutions:
1. Make my own chicken stock? As if. Publix had the 32 oz. cartons of Swanson broth on sale for $2 this week. Sold.
2. My Publix does not carry a wide mushroom selection and I wasn’t about to go all Whole Foods on you girls. So I used one 3.5 oz. package of shitakes and 8 oz. of button mushrooms. The shitakes satisfied the “wild” quotient for me. By all means, find the creminis and oysters if you are so inclined.
3. I had Madeira wine, so I didn’t buy any. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I had opened the Madeira wine in 2001, and that it had gone way bad. So I dumped it and used some Chardonnay instead. Why? Because it was open.

These substitutions in no way affected the outcome of my risotto. I followed the cooking instructions exactly, and after 25 minutes of constant stirring, found myself the beneficiary of a perfectly cooked, steaming bowl of absolute deliciousness. This stuff is culinary crack. I loved this recipe, and found it completely worth the total 1 hour of prep and cooking time. I just ate the leftovers for lunch, and they were just as good as they were last night.

As I applaud my culinary genius for tackling risotto, and thank Giada for bringing this recipe into my life, it’s only prudent that I reflect on what technique I think made the recipe a success. I think the key to perfectly cooked risotto is to keep the rice going at a medium heat in a Dutch oven exactly as the recipe instructs. The wide surface area of my beloved red Le Crueset Dutch oven (this is seriously a great investment and is my FAVE kitchen item) gave the rice a lot of contact with the heat. The constant stirring assured that that the grains didn’t rest too long on direct heat. Cooking in on medium kept my cooking time to about 25 minutes, which was ideal, because my arms got tired and my wine glass got, well, empty.

Speaking of wine, while I think a pinot noir pairing would have been sublime, I enjoyed my risotto last night with the last bit of my chosen BSD, which I paired the night before with a dish of shrimp and feta cheese over vermicelli. To my delight, I did find a sparkling shiraz at Total Wine; Paringa from Australia for a nice price of $12/bottle. Mr. Focker said it was good for a “carbonated wine” (um-kay...) and I enjoyed it as well. But it wasn't superior to prosecco for me – prosecco will always be my favorite BSD. Mmmm...I might need to make another trip to Total Wine!