Blaine's Recipe of the Week - 4/12/07

Starting today, each week I'll feature a homemade recipe from my personal cookbook. Being half Italian and proud of it, I'll start with some Italian dishes.

Red Wine Risotto: Serves 8 if serving as main course and 10 party style
•· 5 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
•· 4 tablespoon minced garlic
•· 1.5 teaspoon ground black pepper
•· 1.5 cups shallots or small onions
•· 2 cups Arborio rice
•· Dry boletus mushrooms. If you don't have access to boleus, shitake will work.
•· Chicken stock, preferably home made
•· 2 cups merlot/pinot noir or dry red wine
•· 3 cups parmesan reggiano (2 cups stirred in at end, 1 cup carvings on top before serving for presentation)
•· Sea salt or kosher salt to taste
•· Butter at end for creamy texture
•· Heavy cream at end for texture and to even out taste

Notes: Soak mushrooms in a bowl of water for 60 minutes. Squeeze emaining juice in mushrooms back into the bowl and keep the mushroom juice. Separately, add chicken stock and wine into two small pots and heat at low. In large pot or pan, sauté olive oil, garlic, pepper and shallots/onions until golden brown. Add Arborio rice and continue sautéing until rice is lightly golden. Add mushrooms and mushroom water. Add all of the wine and keep at a simmer, stirring often. As the rice soaks up the wine, add chicken stock as needed until rice is 3 minutes from being cooked. Reduce heat to low and stir in 2 cups grated parmesan reggiano. Add salt to taste. Right before serving, add butter for texture and taste. Lastly, add heavy cream as desired; this will even out the flavor, and combined with the butter will bring out an extremely rich, cream flavor. For presentation, shave remaining parmesan reggiano and sprinkle on top...mmm, delish!

Now that's Italian cooking, enjoy!