Mushroom risotto

Before you start

• a second pan for the stock — it has to be hot when it goes in and stay hot
• about 45 minutes, and the last twenty want you at the pan

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 180gshort-grain rice — arborio or carnaroli — fat short grains that give up their starch
• 300gchestnut mushrooms
• 900mlstock
• 25gbutter
• 35gparmesan
• 1onion
• 2garlic cloves
• 1 tbspolive oil
• 1 tbspwhite vinegar
• 1 few sprigsthyme

Method

8 steps

1. chop · 7m

   Mushrooms sliced thick, onion diced very fine, garlic sliced. The onion has to be small enough to vanish — a risotto has no texture to hide a chunk in.

2. fry · 12m

   Mushrooms browned in the oil in two batches in a wide hot pan and lifted out. Tipped in all together they release their water and stew, and stewed mushrooms never develop any flavour at all.

3. finish · 2m

   Stock into a second pan on the next ring and held just under a simmer for the rest of the cooking.

4. fry · 6m

   Onion and garlic softened in the butter in the wide pan, then the rice turned through until every grain is coated and the edges have gone glassy. Two minutes, and it should smell faintly toasted.

5. finish · 1m

   Vinegar in while the pan is at its hottest, and stirred until it has hissed away entirely. It is a spoonful of sharpness going in at the one moment the rice will take it, and without something doing that job the finished pan tastes flat and heavy.

6. simmer · 20m

   Hot stock a ladle at a time, stirred often, each one almost gone before the next goes in. Eighteen minutes or so, and it is done when a grain still has the faintest resistance in the centre — not crunch, resistance.

7. fold · 3m

   Off the heat, the mushrooms back in with the rest of the butter and the parmesan, and beaten hard for a minute. This is what turns it creamy, and it happens off the flame or the cheese splits.

8. rest · 3m walk away

   Lid on, two minutes, then loosened with a last splash of stock. On the plate it should settle slowly into a level pool rather than sit up in a heap.