Simple, warming supper.

We have all had far too much rich food, I'm sure. So last night I went for one of my favourite winter meals - Risotto. A simple risotto can be made from store cupboard ingredients (rice, onion, garlic and a few good stock cubes) but it becomes much more fun when you add interesting bits to the mix.
Risotto is one of those dishes for which everybody believes they have the definitive recipe. "Well they didn't make it like that when I was in Milan", "No, no it has to be Carnoroli darrrling", "You can only stir clockwise, it simply doesn't work otherwise", "It has to be served at exactly 69 degrees centigrade"
As with many dishes there is a whole host of myths and rumours surrounding the making of a good risotto. The truth is, making a good risotto is easy and, lets be honest, we're only making a savoury rice pudding here.
So here are my tips for a stress free risotto (the purists and pedants can stop reading here).
Fry finely chopped onion in, what looks like, too much oil and butter (about 50:50) till it becomes transparent. Add a little finely chopped garlic and fry for just a minute. Add "enough" rice (as good as you can afford - make sure it is one of the risotto rices though - Arborio, Carnoroli, etc)and fry till it starts to sound like "frying".
Pour in a couple of ladles of hot (and I mean nearly boiling) stock and stir. Keep adding hot stock and stirring till the risotto is how you like it - oozy, stiff or soupy - the choice is yours but do make sure the rice is cooked. Add enough cheese (Parmesan is apt but a strong cheddar works) to make it smooth and silky.
Now that's the basic risotto, but the fun comes when you start to add interesting stuff. The Beautiful Wife love peas in her risotto and I'm a huge fan of little dice of salami.
Last night I made the risotto with peas and then popped some Chorizo, sliced and fried, on top. A trickle of the wonderful, paprika laden fat poored over the top completed the picture.
I am no purist so I am quite comfortable mixing Italian classics with Spanish ingredients.
Chorizo come in two types those which require cooking and those which do not, This was a "picante" cooking sausage bought from Tony at "What's cooking?" in Thame.