Vegetarian Risotto

Courtesy Alex McLaren


Serves four

Ingredients

• 1+3/4 Arborio rice
• 6 cups or more vegetable stock (I prefer College Inn stock)
• Pecorino Romano or Parmesan, a few handfuls of it, finely grated.  It's also standard to have some to spoon over at the table.
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion (sweet onion preferred) or shallot
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup finely chopped mushroom

How to :

1. Get the stock very hot, close to boiling point. 
2. Fry the mushroom in 3 tbsp of the butter slowly so as to soften the mushroom but not brown it much.  Getting the mushroom flavor to infuse into the butter is particularly important, so save the butter along with the mushroom.
3. Lightly fry up the onion in the remaining butter.  A little olive oil can be a helpful addition at this step, to keep things even.  The onion should be fried only until soft translucent, not further.
4. Add the rice to the onion/butter mixture and stir so the rice is coated.
5. Add 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of the stock and bring the mixture to a slow simmer, stirring fairly constantly.  When the stock has been almost completely absorbed, add another half cup or so, stir it in, with the mixture still simmering.  The process should continue until the rice is somewhat firm, but fully cooked.  Al dente, if you will.
6. Mix in the mushroom and its butter, as well as two handfulls of the cheese.  Mix it up, it should be done.  

 

Tips

• This dish becomes very sticky and unpleasant fairly quickly, so it should be eaten when cooked.