Revisiting risotto: rock shrimp and peas

You know, I am flying rather high over last night's dinner. Writing about it, and re-reading it, is making me take more "air." So, rather than make you all wait another day, I'm going to give you the risotto recipe NOW. Am I a sweetheart or what?
There is a mythology that builds up around risotto, making it sound like one of those "Mt. Everests" of the kitchen. There ARE a few principles that you need to keep in mind, but ultimately, this is a very simple dish to make.
Risotto needs Italian short grain rice. You may NOT subsitute long grain rice. Or basmati. Or brown rice. Or wild rice. Sorry, you just can't. It won't work. When you buy the rice for risotto, you'll be offered three choices: arborio, carnaroli, and nanno. Arborio is the one that everyone has heard of. It's good rice, and it's the cheapest one. Carnaroli is better. Nanno is the "queen of risotto rice," but it's too fine, in my opinion, for a good risotto. Stick to carnaroli, and you'll be fine.

A cup of short grain rice will absorb four cups of liquid. Keep that in mind when you're cooking. Also, keep in mind that risotto was always intended as a FIRST course. You can make it for dinner as your main dish, but it's very difficult to cook more than two cups worth of dry rice at a time. Now to our recipe, which served the four of us.

In addition to the rice, you need fish stock. DON'T buy canned fish stock. It's vile. It is TRULY vile. You can buy fresh made fish stock at a good fishmonger (what do you think they do with those bones?), or you can take a shot at making it yourself: get two or three pounds of bones from the fish monger (he or she may give them to you, but you'll probably have to pay something), as well as a large carrot, cut into pieces and a peeled onion, cut into quarters. Put them all in a pot, with two quarts of water. Bring this to a boil, then simmer it for ten minutes, NO MORE. Strain that liquid immediately, because if you let it sit, it will get nasty. In a pinch, you can use clam juice, diluted 1:1 with water. For this recipe, you need a quart of the liquid

Risotto starts with a "battuto," which is a bad name for it. Battuto means "beaten," and really, what you have here is the sort of thing that Spanish cooks call a soffrito, or a "fry." Usually, it's shallots and/or onions. For a fish risotto, I prefer a fennel bulb, chopped fine, but roughly (I wish you could have seen Jeremy go to work on that bulb). Put this in a pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil, and let it cook away until the sizzle begins to die down. While this is happening, heat your stock.

Now add the cup of rice. Stir it in the hot fat and the fennel, and keep an eye on it. Rice, when it is sauteed, goes from an iridescent "pearl" quality, to a drier, chalky white. When this happens, you're ready to start adding hot stock.

You add stock gradually when making risotto, and there's a good rule to follow. When you can run a spoon down the middle of the pan, and separate the solids without any liquid running to the path, it's time for more stock. I add it - or in this case, Keith added it - ladle by ladle, stirring regularly at the start, i.e., for the first half of the stock. At this point, taste it. You may need some salt, and if you don't put it in now, it won't get into the rice.

Keep adding the stock until you've used about three quarters of it. It's at this point, you're going to add your shrimp. In any kind of fish risotto, you're going to add the fish late, because it cooks so fast. We used rockshrimp because they are in season now, although not in NY. Much of shrimp harvesting is done via shrimp FARMS, and the debate goes on as to whether the dredging of the bottom of bodies of water, where shrimp reside, does damage to the environment. Rock shrimp are wild. They are only in season for a while, and they are small, plump, sweet and delicious. You'll need a pound for this.

Anyway, stir them in after you've added 3 cups of the stock, and then, all at once, add the last cup of stock. You can continue to stir at this point, but honestly, you don't need to. What you SHOULD do is taste the rice. Is it soft enough for you? This is important because the texture of the rice is really a matter of personal taste, and what's soft enough for you isn't soft enough for the next guy, and so forth. If it's not soft enough, keep the fire on. If it is, or if it's CLOSE to being soft enough, turn it off. The rice is going to absorb all of the liquid, it's just a question of soft texture. At this point, you toss in a cup of peas and stir them in, as well. Finally, if you like and you have them, stir in some of the fronds of your fennel bulb.

NO CHEESE IN THIS!!!! If you want to, you can do the traditional "mounting" of the risotto by adding a tablespoon of butter. We didn't, and we were quite fine without it. The rice was creamy, and delicious, and the sweetness of the rock shrimp, and peas from last spring was perfect. (STILL cleaning out the freezer, what can ya do?).

Now again, go back and count down what you have to do. Getting the ingredients together will take you almost as much time as it does to make the dish. It's a quickie. You can get from start to finish in half an hour. And if you set up your fish ahead of time, what you can do is put the fish in the oven ten minutes before the risotto is ready, and have a wonderful, multicourse dinner at your command, without a whole lot of work.

The work, of course falls to the person who does the dishes, but why should that be you? Hell, you cooked. And you worked SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard.

Right...