Risotto

Time between the Daring Cooks challenge posts seems to go faster and faster. Maybe it has something to do with the endless gray skies and damp weather we've been having. The perfect weather, as it turns out, for risotto, which happily was the subject of this month's challenge.

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

The challenge required us to make our own chicken stock from scratch and the risotto base. Mike and I regularly make our chicken stock because it tastes much better than the boxed variety, so we were very familiar with that step of the challenge. While I certainly wouldn't call either of us professional risotto makers, we've made our share of risotto in the past, so we decided to try to mix it up as much as we could and do something that would be entirely new for us.

So instead of the traditional arborio or other short grain white rice, we decided to use short grain brown rice, and come up with a heartier dish better suited for our weather.



Instead of a base using white wine, we decided to go with red wine. From there, a wild mushroom risotto seemed like the perfect, and logical choice.






The result was delicious, I have to say. The risotto had a nuttier texture than traditional risotto, and using red wine produced a risotto with deeper flavor.





I'd highly recommend trying out a risotto like this when the weather's just right for staying in.

For a similar recipe, see: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/wild-mushroom-and-red-wine-risotto