#cheframsey

White Wine and Mushroom Risotto

I have always been intimidated by risotto, mainly because of my fear of Gordon Ramsay. Let’s take this story back a bit... 

Growing up (and still now) my mom watched many MANY cooking shows, one of her favourites was Hell’s Kitchen. I would sit and watch mainly to see who Chef Ramsay would make cry first. After so many seasons, I began to see a pattern... NO ONE COULD GET THE DAMN RISOTTO RIGHT!! Over and over again Chef Ramsay would rip these poor chefs apart for so many reasons: too overcooked, too undercooked, not seasoned well, and so on. I always thought there was a big secret to cooking risotto...

So 21 years later I decided to try it.

I decided to make this meal as my first home-cooked meal in my boyfriend and I’s first apartment together (also, I’d like to add that this was my first time moving out so up until this point I was living at home with my parents). This was a fairly new experience for me since I never cooked much at home, I was always a sous chef to my Dad but never HEAD chef.

I found a quick and easy recipe (see below), it seemed fairly straight forward even though the dish itself looks fancy and professional so I gave it a go. Hence, “Fake It Till You Make It”.

It ended up working out really well. The arborio rice I used was very easy to cook and soaked up the flavours so nicely. In my amateur opinion I feel as though it wasn’t a lot different from cooking regular rice, but it could easily go wrong if overcooked. I’m not sure if Chef Ramsay would approve of this risotto but my taste buds did.

I also used a chardonnay white wine. They say use a wine you enjoy drinking for two reasons: 

1. So you can have a glass while you’re cooking (obviously)

2. Because you can really taste the wine flavour in the rice

i regret choosing the chardonnay because I’ve never been a chardonnay drinker and I feel like I would have enjoyed it with a less dry wine but it was cheap so you give some you take some. 

I took it one step further and pan seared some asparagus with lemon juice. 

Overall I was very satisfied with myself and this recipe.