Curried Chicken Risotto

I hadn’t made a risotto for a while so i felt in the mood for one. I decided to use a chicken/white wine base this time.

This is my standard procedure of cooking risotto…

1. Cook the onion/leek/garlic,
2. heat stock (wine, stock, water, salt),
3. heat and coat the rice with onion/oil/butter
4. add a cup of wine to start with
5. stir
6. add stock
7. stir
8. test rice…still hard
9. add stock
10. stir
11. add stock
12. stir
13. test rice…getting soft
14. add stock
15. stir
16. add stock
17. stir
18. test rice, close enough to being ready to add things that need a bit of heat
19. add those things (meat,seafood, hard vegetables)
20. add stock
21. stir
22. add more stock (stock getting low so hope i dont need much more)
23. add seasoning (pepper, salt, ground spices, coriander, cumin, tumeric, fennel seed etc)
24. add stock
25. stir
26. taste
27. add more seasoning
28. test rice, getting close to being done now
29. add stock
30. add cheese (parmesan, peccorino, whatever you like, skip if it doesn’t suit cheese)
31. stir
32. taste
33. add more seasoning
34. add spinach or greens that need to be wilted (bok choy, cabbage, roquette etc)
35. stir
36. taste
37. add a bit of butter or cream to boost that fat content up and add extra creaminess to finish (can also skip this)
38. stir
39. taste, perfection on a spoon.
40. done !

So for this recipe i added onion, garlic and fennel at step 1, chicken (pre cooked) and baby carrots at step 19, tumeric, cumin, salt, pepper, lemon juice at step 23… and skipped the cheese, green vegetables, and cream steps of my normal routine.

It turned out pretty nice… lovely creamy curry flavour coming through the rice and chicken. I also use Carnaroli rice instead of arborio. This is because im under the impression that it has a higher starch content than Arborio, and gives a much creamier finish than Arborio rice does.

Give it a try !