Mushroom Risotto

On Saturday Nick and I took a break from soup making to test out a recipe for our Thanksgiving dinner with friends, aka Friendsgiving.  Nick and I previously made the Risotto with Mushrooms and Pecorino recipe from Ted Allen’s cookbook, The Food You Want to Eat, and it was insanely delicious.  We thought it would be great to bring to Friendsgiving, but when we checked out the recipe, we realized that it only served two people as a main course or 6 as an appetizer.  Right now there are about 22 people set to attend the dinner, so that just wasn’t going to work.  We would need to triple the recipe.  Then we remembered that risotto, as Ted says, “doesn’t wait well.”  Since the dinner is about 45 minutes away in Jersey, I was a little worried about how it would turn out.  We decided that a test run was in order.

We found that risotto isn’t difficult to make, it’s just very labor intensive and you have to follow the directions without cutting corners.  First, we had to chop up two types of mushrooms: Portobello and shiitake.  You cook the mushrooms first in some olive oil and garlic.

Once they are tender and the liquid has evaporated, add some parsley, salt, and pepper, and then transfer them to another bowl.

Then you cook the onions with some oil until they get soft, and then add the rice, which you cook until it becomes translucent.  Next you add some white wine and continue to cook the mixture until it is almost dry.

At that point you add small batches of warm chicken stock to the rice and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed. 

Then you add some more stock, and so on until the rice is al dente. 

Once the rice is nicely cooked, you add the mushrooms mixture, some pecorino cheese, pepper, and salt to taste.  The recipe also calls for prosciutto, but I’m not a huge fan so we left it out.

We then jumped in the car and drove the pot of risotto five minutes down the road to my sister’s house, where she, her husband, and my grandmother were waiting patiently for dinner.  We served it right away with a spinach salad with carrots and tomatoes, but the texture of the risotto was more pastey even though the drive was pretty short.  Here's a shot of the same meal that we ate the next night.  There was plenty of leftovers!

It tasted good, but Ted was right: it needed to be served immediately.  We also found that tripling the recipe made the ratio between the ingredients a little off.  It was hard to get the rice to cook consistently because there was so much of it in the pot and I was worried that some of it would be hard.  Thankfully it wasn’t.

As good as the risotto turned out, we realized that we were going to have to make a different dish for Friendsgiving, one that can be easily reheated.  Any suggestions?