I made this pulled pork and mushroom risotto with leftovers slow cooked pork. This was a great idea and a very tasty dish.
For four people. Preparation & cooking -30 – 45 min
Ingredients
- 1 cup of arborio rice
- 1 cup of dry white wine
- 1 pack of king brown mushroom sliced lengthwise (4 to 5 mushrooms). Other mushrooms may also work.
- leftover pork – keep the sauce, it will go into the stock
- 3 large cloves of garlic, pressed
- 1 medium size onion sliced thin
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup (depending on your taste) of grana panado
- 1 L of stock: if you have some cooking sauce left, use it and add water to make 1.5 L. If you none of the cooking juice or only a little, you would need to complete with bought stock.
- Fresh herbs to serve and shaved grana panado.
Method:
- Prepare the stock and bring it to simmering point in a saucepan, keep it warm.
- Shred or break apart the meat, set aside.
- Heat up 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a large deep frypan, add the onion and garlic and reduce the heat until the onion is melted (cooked but not burnt), b the heat up again. Add the rice. When the rice starts changing colour, poor in the white wine, one ladle of the stock and the meat. Add stock just to cover. Reduce to a small simmer and cover. Add more stock when the level goes down, one or two ladles at the time.
- In the meanwhile, melt 15 g of butter in a frypan, Once melted, add the mushroom and fry on both sides until cooked. Set aside.
- When the rice is cooked. Add the cheese, stir through. Place the mushroom on top and gently toss.
- To finish, add fresh herbs and shaved cheese to serve and serve immediately.
Keep your cooking stocks please!! Seriously, you would be loosing so much yummyness. Their best use? A risotto for sure!
What stock? For example when you cook mussels, you will end up with a broth, won’t you? Filter it and freeze it. If you cook a casserole, you may end up with some quite tasty sauce. Put it in the fridge, the next day remove the fat that has accumulated and is hard on the top part of the stock and freeze until you need it. If you are more adventurous and cook ham hocks, you MUST keep the stock, trust me this will be amazing (I tried!).
There are plenty types of risottos, the basic tasks are the same: fry a bit your rice, add condiment, garlic, a glass of wine, then your stock and cook slowly. Some chefs would tell you that risottos must be mixed regularly, other will say not to touch it, I think this comes from regional variations. Some risottos will come with tons of cheese (yum), some other have no cheese. There are so many options!
How easy: VERY EASY!
For a basic recipe try this Jamie Oliver basic risotto .
When I started making risottos,
I started with a cherry tomatoes and mozarella risotto from Marcus Wareing.
Vegetarian people as much as non-vegetarian, this is a must do, so good! I made it so many times since, varying things along.
Now, what prompted me to write this post was one made this week using a mussel broth (moules marinieres) and placing a whole fish in it. It took no time. Here you go!
The recipe for this cherry tomatoes and mozzarella risotto is from Marcus Wareing in his book “One Perfect Ingredient”. The photo above is also from that publication but I can tell you, it looks exactly like in the photo.
Ingredients:
- 1 head of garlic
- 30 cherry tomatoes
- About 150 g of mozzarella divided in 20 mini-balls
- A handful of fresh, young marjoram sprigs. Use other herbs such as basic if you prefer (this is a comment of mine)
- 825 ml of good stock (the recipe says chicken or vegetable stock, clear stock is better but I made it with ham hock stock in the past, it was amazing)
- 175 mL of tomatoes juice (I use a can of cherry tomatoes)
- 100 g unsalted butter, diced
- 400 g arborio rice
- 100 ml dry white wine
- 2 tbsp tomato puree
- 75 g Parmesan cheese, grated
- sea salt flakes and freshly grounded black pepper.
Method:
- Place the garlic cloves skin on (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT) in a shallow roasting tray with olive oil, salt and dry herbs, put under the grill for 20 min or until soft in the middle. You can also do them in a small frypan on very low heat. The inside will be melted (and even if you don’t like garlic, you will love this version of it, trust me!).
- Put the tomatoes in another roasting tray, again toss with olive oil and rock salt and place in the oven. Roast for 15 minutes.
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Season the mozzarella balls with salt, dried basil, pepper and lemon juice; put aside.
-
Mix broth and tomato paste and tomato juice, heat on low temperature. Keep warm.
-
Melt half the butter in a thick based and deep pan. Add the rice and stir for 2 minutes.
Add the white wine. Turn the heat down. Add the broth in small portions: let the rice absorb it and stir after each addition. Cook for 15-20 minutes stirring between additions.
- When the rice is almost al-dente , stir in the remaining butter and the parmesan. Remove from the heat and stir in gently the mozzarella balls and roasted tomatoes and roasted garlic. Add a splash of the roasted tomatoes juice is any.
- Before serving, add the fresh marjoram sprigs
This rainbow trout risotto could be done with other fish. Increase the quantities to reflect the number of people. You may need to get a wider (shallower) pot if you need place for more than one fish.
I did not garnish it much or embellish it much, it was a midweek dinner main.
The key to any risotto is A GOOD STOCK !!! Oh yeah!
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 750 ml to 1 litre mussel (moules) marinieres stock (or good fish stock)
- 1 head garlic
- 1 rainbow trout
- 1 glass dry white wine
- 220 g of arborio rice (rule of thumb is 50 g/pers)
- Garden herbs (if using)
Note: no need for salt as the stock (at least mine) is salty enough.
Method:
Warm up the stock until simmer. Peel and crush 4 cloves of garlic.
Place some oil at the bottom of a thick based pot (I used my long Creuset), when hot, place the rice, crushed garlic, unpeeled garlic cloves and garden herbs in the pot and stir from time to time until half of the grains are white.
Add the wine, reduce the heat to low.
Then place the fish over the rice and slowly add all the stock. Cover and cook on very low for 20-30 minutes. Turn off the heat when the rice is almost done but still a bit al-dente and with the lead on top, let the dish cool down half an hour. The rice will keep developing and be just right.
