Risotto from Cravings

The husband finds it very weird that I bought a cookbook written by a model that is NOT a diet book. I am completely happy with this purchase. I love the way Chrissy Teigan has put together the Cravings cookbook and so far the only recipe I’ve tried that hasn’t been great was the hard-boiled eggs, and I’m always hit-or-miss on hard boiled eggs, even using the same recipe, so it’s totally not a cookbook thing. I don’t want to break copyrights buy including the recipes here, so here is my thoughts on the Mushroom and Pea Risotto recipe.

I’ve never made proper risotto before. I’ve used cooked rice to make a rice-otto, but never bought the proper risotto rice before. Partly because I was always under the impression that risotto is very complicated to make since Gordon Ramsay is always yelling at people on Hell’s Kitchen for screwing up the risotto. Cravings assured me that risotto was one of those dishes that isn’t scary but scares people so I bought some Arborio rice when I was at Bulk Barn and prepared to give it a try.

I’m not a huge mushroom fan so I used just plain old white mushrooms instead of cremini. I never know what type of wine to use when it says “dry white wine” so I used some pinot grigio I had in the fridge. After pouring the wine in it smelled too sweet, but it all tasted fine at the end. I don’t have a fancy grater for fresh parmesan (note to self – visit the Ikea that’s nearby and pick up a grater) so I used pre-grated. Using pre-grated I’d probably drop the amount of parmesan to ¾ cup, but other than that I wouldn’t change the recipe. I was serving the risotto as a main dish with some leftover roast chicken, so I heated up the chicken in the same pan to reduce the number of dishes (you’re welcome, my dish-washing husband).

The recipe was not technically difficult, it just required constant attention and stirring. It was delicious! We ended up with 2 dinner portions and then I took the rest in my lunch for 2 days. I had a lot of interested coworkers because it smelled delicious heating up at work, and they were very impressed that I made the risotto from scratch. I would definitely make this again, although the husband requested it be served as a side dish and that I had more chicken next time.

Here is my lunch portion with some veggies.