Mushroom Risotto

Instructions

1. Bring water to the boil in large sauce pan. Turn off heat and add porcini mushrooms, let soak 10 minutes. Once soaked, remove mushrooms with a slotted spoon onto a chopping board and chop. Set aside. Crumble the stock cube into water, stirring to dissolve. Keep warm over low heat.
2. In a medium deep-frying pan add olive oil and onion, sweat on a medium heat for 5 minutes until soft, then add garlic and sweat that for a couple of minutes. Add chopped chestnut mushrooms and fry for a few minutes until they’ve softened, add porcini and risotto rice, stir well.
3. Add white wine, stir, and keep stirring until it evaporates completely. Then start adding hot stock, bit by bit and keep stirring, only adding more when the last has evaporated. Keep going until all stock is gone, by this point the rice should be creamy, loose, and very close to being cooked (this should take about 20 minutes), if needed add another splash of boiling water to loosen.
4. Take the pan off the heat, add butter, dried parsley, black pepper and parmesan, season with sea salt to taste. Stir well and leave to stand for a couple of minutes.
5. While the risotto is standing, put a small frying pan on a high heat and dry fry your sliced mushrooms until caramelized, take off the heat and season to taste with a little salt and black pepper.
6. To serve, add fresh lemon juice to risotto, stir once more and divide between four bowls and top with a drizzle of olive oil, fried mushrooms, parmesan shavings and extra black pepper.
7. Cooking Tip Most dried herbs will work nicely in this dish, such as parsley or thyme or basil. To make your parmesan shaving, use a vegetable peeler on a large block of parmesan.