Risotto, From Scratch

In addition to my weekly dinners I have been cooking, we are still taking on our From Scratch Weekends plan and creating meals as much from scratch as possible.  This past weekend, we kept it simple with risotto.  Funny, we have never made risotto from scratch before.  I will admit to making prepackaged in the past.

First off, as we were grocery shopping, we spotted this in the broccoli.  That’s right, look at the cute little caterpillar crawling on what could be part of my dinner.

Ok, we bought a different piece of broccoli.

Here is the risotto recipe we selected from a Good Housekeeping Cookbook Ryan has had for sometime now and contains a lot of classic recipes.

 

Ryan was on onion duty for this recipe.

 

I took on the broccoli…yep, no runny eyes and nose for me.

 

I have had this TJ’s grain blend for some time and we thought it would make a nice alternative to just plain rice.  By the way, we were right!

The recipe called for dry white wine and we came up with this idea.

Here we are getting the risotto started.

If there was ever a list of my best purchases ever, the top of the list would be this $12 rice cooker that has a top compartment for steaming.  This was a great purchase and I use it to steam veggies more than I use it for rice.  Seriously, it makes the veggies perfect because I can check easily to see the consistency of the veggies and it does not take up room on the stove.

The risotto is coming along nicely.

There you go, candlelit dinner for two.

The risotto was awesome.  Ryan did most of the work and he did a great job.

It was really hard to mess this one up, so here is my perfectly steamed broccoli.

The finished products on the plate and ready to be enjoyed.

Like I said, it was simple, but it was very tasty.  It was nice to do because we had never made risotto before.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever made risotto before?  What is your favorite risotto dish?  What was the best investment you made for your kitchen?