Mushroom Risotto

On our visit to Borough Market last week, we picked up four chicken carcasses for £1 at the Ginger Pig to make into stock. We haven’t had a roast chicken recently (or bought a whole chicken for any other reason) so spotting these was good timing. Four chicken carcasses makes quite a lot of stock though and since we only have a small freezer, we needed to use some up quickly. Risotto was the obvious answer.

We kept this fairly plain and just added some interesting mushrooms at the end which were cooked with some thyme. Stephen went on to add some lemon juice and parsley to his and I added some truffle oil, both of which worked well with the mushrooms and thyme.

Basic Risotto Recipe
Serves 2

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 tbsps olive oil for frying
1 small glass white wine or white vermouth
250g risotto rice
1l chicken stock
Good handful grated parmesan
Salt and pepper

Heat up the oil and when it is hot, add the celery, onion and garlic (we put a lid on at this point). When this mixture has softened, add the rice and turn up the heat. The rice should fry and start to turn translucent, but if it starts to colour then turn the heat down. As it starts to colour, add the wine or vermouth and stir while the alcohol burns off.

Turn the heat back down and when the wine has been absorbed, start adding stock a ladle at a time, stirring until it has been absorbed and then adding some more. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, then just start adding water. When the rice is cooked but still has just a little bite left to it, it is done. Stir in the grated parmesan, check for seasoning and serve.

This can of course be varied to include other ingredients, we often use bacon which we cook in the same pan and then remove, returning to the pan with the last ladle of stock (as we did this time with the mushrooms). Other vegetables could be added at this point too.