Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Lemony 'Shroomy Chicken Risotto


Lemon Chicken Risotto, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.
Note to Self: give the red gratin bowls a rest. Even though this looks like everything else I make, It's quite remarkable. It's delish! No surprises there but it's the first time I've ever made a risotto.
I've found yet another awesome thing to do with my roasted chicken.
Again I've concocted a crazy hybrid two recipes. First up was a Lemon Chicken Risotto recipe I got from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Supper for a Song...yes, sister of one of my favorite actors (thumpita, thumpita). I love her cookbook even though it's a little anglo centric, but at least she uses american measurement here. I've been wanting to make this for weeks so finally decide to do it and set up my little netbook where I'd transcribed the recipe, problem was it was incomplete. When the hell do you add the chicken and the heavy cream! WTF? Thank GOD (yeah I said it) for Americas Test Kitchen.
So happens that just last night I picked up a copy of The Best of Americas Test Kitchen, well, lugged it all the way home from the library last night. In the rain, but that's okay! I LOVE Americas Test Kitchen. I'd carry that behemoth anywhere. The have a Mushroom Risotto recipe that looked super good. So I gave up the sauteed mushrooms I was saving for the Chicken Pot Pie encore and set to work jumping back and forth between the two recipes.
I started with some clarified butter in the dutch oven alternative to the olive oil TD-L calls for and the butter ATK calls for.  Dice up a half a white onion that's been sitting in the fridge for a couple of days, saute that up in the butter a bit  before adding 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice, stir that around a bit just to coat . Then I toss in the leftover sauteed mushrooms, some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and 4 cups of umnn chicken broth (water with of chicken flavored seasoning...yes. Just some of those little green packets of powder. It's fine) oh!I JUST this moment remembered that I forgot to put some garlic in there but ya know, it didn't matter one bit.
So where was I? I made a little bouquet garni with fresh rosemary, thyme and sage (tie a few stems of each with some kitchen twine and toss in the pot-it leaves all the flavor and no stems to stick in your teeth when you pull the bundle out).
Then I let it simmer until it was almost done (after about 15 minutes) then added some lemon zest and about a cup of diced chicken. Let it cook for about 5 more minutes and DONE.
What's nice about risotto is that it's SUPPOSED to have that creamy texture. Man! this will be soooooo good with a poached egg on top in the morning.

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