Mushroom Risotto

Kerri was going to be out today, so we hadn’t planned anything particularly elaborate. As it was though, she wasn’t feeling well and stayed at home. Which meant that we needed dinner and hadn’t planned any. Kerri suggested mushroom risotto with thyme and lemon, which sounded like a good idea so we made chicken stock from yesterday’s chicken carcass, bought some mushrooms and got to work.

We followed a fairly standard risotto recipe, with a few additions. We used half chestnut mushrooms and half mixed wild mushrooms. We fried the mushrooms in batches in a mixture of butter and olive oil with some thyme, then when they were done, put onto a plate and sprinkled with some lemon juice (found that in a Jamie Oliver risotto recipe). We also soaked some dried porcini mushrooms in hot water and then chopped them, mixing them with half the chestnut mushrooms which we also chopped finely.

After adding the first ladle of stock, we added the finely chopped porcini and chestnut mushrooms and then carried on as normal. We mixed the the porcini soaking water into the stock to give a more mushroomy flavour, and also added a few dashes of mushroom ketchup. With the last ladle of stock, we added the rest of the mushrooms and also the zest of half a lemon.

Quite late in the process we realised that we didn’t have any parmesan, which was a bit of an oversight. We decided that we would just live without it and have a slightly more healthy risotto. It did turn out rather well and was very mushroomy, with the rice cooked until just soft enough but still with some bite. It was good without the parmesan, but I did end up grating some manchego onto it though (needed to make do with what we had), which added a bit extra.