PW's Risotto

When regular rice just won't do it for you.... Risotto is what will. Be prepared to devote at least a half hour to making this dish - as in don't answer the phone and if a kid gets an owie, someone else has to kiss & bandage it. Because of the heavy attention this dish required - constant stirring over the stove for the full duration of the cooking time I opted to use my little point & shoot Cannon Powershot.... taking pics with one hand is not really possible with my big Nikon... so the Cannon got some use today.  And, it also helps explain why the pictures aren't the best - taking a picture and stirring at the same time is not easy... I even forgot to stir a couple times!! Unfortunately, it also made for somewhat blurry pictures LOL... Oh well!

Here's the link to PW's recipe - I made half the volume and am glad I did. If I'd made the full recipe we'd be eating this for days. Not that it wasn't good, but a girl needs variety dangit!

The only real advice I can give you is this - make sure you have all your ingredients prepped (cut, measured etc) and set out, ready to go, before you start cooking. If you don't, you won't be able to. It took 25 minutes to reach the right doneness, and it really didn't start getting there till after the 20 minute mark.

Here we are, about 5 minutes in, after the addition of the second cup of chicken broth, and then so on down the line:

Until it was time to add the chives, oh man does this stuff smell delicious!

I had put some chicken thighs in the crock pot earlier - seasoned with only salt, pepper and some sprigs of lemon thyme. Right before I started cooking the risotto, I placed the chicken thighs in a 9x13 pan and placed them in the oven at 300 degrees, along with some brown bread. I did add some garlic salt to the chicken before placing it in the oven. 

The other thing I did was make some gravy from the juices in the crock pot - 2 tbsp butter melted in a pan, wisk in 2 tbsp flour & then strain the crock pot juices through a sieve. It made an awesome gravy for the chicken and required NO additional seasonings!

Serve it all up with a nice green salad... YUM