Viva Risotto!

This long weekend, I finally found some time to spend with the kitchen. So, I managed to whip up one of Adrian's favorite dishes--Risotto.

In the last Italian feast with friends, I cooked a basic risotto. This time, I challenged myself with a slightly gourmet version of it--Risotto with Leeks, Shiitake Mushrooms and Truffles from Epicurious.com(which I then improvised with asparagus).

Rissoto is an Italian creamy rice that is cooked slowly with cream, broth and fresh ingredients like chicken, mushroom, truffle (which is expensively impossible to find in Malaysia), pumpkin, peas and cured meat.

To make good risotto, one needs a lot of patience because the procedure and temparature have to be right. Imagine stirring the rice for 20 minutes non-stop in order to let the rice sloly absorbs the broth batch by batch. Not to mention that the broth has to be hot. Other ingredients have to be cooked separately before mixing into well-flavoured and cooked risotto.

Yes, it is quite labour intensive but when you see the sense of satisfaction and happiness on the face your loved one after savouring the dish-- the reward is, priceless!

Who would imagine 1 cup of arborio short-grain rice will yield four servings of scrumptious risotto?

Creamy risotto with flavourful textures--leek with cream, shiitake mushroom with fresh thyme, asparagus with garlic . Don't forget to add fresh ground peppercorns to give it a kick!!!

Let's risotto tonight!