A luxurious-looking dish with relatively low cost. Could be served as first course of a seafood meal.
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 5 € pp)
- 2 small onions
- 2 garlic cloves
- 240 g carnaroli rice
- 1/2 kg (about 12 pieces) fresh medium shrimps
- White wine or dry vermouth
- Salt
- 1 roasted tomato
- EV sunflower oil
- 30 g butter
- 30 g parmigiano reggiano cheese
- Fresh peppermint
Do you cook on Saturdays, or do you usually go out to eat? Anyway, if you stay at home, it is a good opportunity to make something more demanding, compared to the simple everyday dinners, without raising the cost significantly.
– Any idea Mr Cook?
– You can make a risotto with shrimps and fresh mint…
First of all we make the stock. We wash well the shrimps and we remove the heads from the bodies. We cut a small onion in slices. We heat some oil in a pan and we sauté the heads of the shrimps with the onion. With a wooden ladle we smash the heads trying to melt them and we continue sauté for another minute. We slightly salt. We set aside and we wait to cool.
When they are cool, we put them in a liter of filtered or mineral water and we start boiling them in a low low heat for 45 minutes. We, then, pass the liquid from a fine chinois, we keep the liquid and we discard the heads with the onion.
– What, you already feel tired? That’s why I SCREAAAAMMMMM that your freezer has to be full, not with silly supermarket things, but with stocks, bases and other preparations, which will help you cook better, faster and with less effort. But this is another story.
So, in a pan, with 2 tbs of sunflower oil, we sauté two garlic cloves, minced, and a small onion, also minced, and we toast the rice very slighty and carefully, avoiding to over-burn the rice. We deglaze with the wine or vermouth and we add one ladle of stock. The temperature of the stock has to be very high.
Some insist that we have to stir the risotto dishes from the beginning. I have a different opinion. I think that the rice has to be stirred only at the final stages of the preparation, cos that is the moment when we want to extract the starches. So, in the beginning, one full ladle per time and not much stirring. As we proceed we lower the amount of stock and we raise the stirring frequency. We check often the saltiness of the stock.
While the rice is being prepared, in another pan we sauté the bodies of the shrimps for 2 minutes. We keep 8 shrimps and we peel the rest. We cut the flesh in pieces.
When the rice is almost done, we lower the temperature and we add the butter, the shrimps´ flesh, pieces of roasted tomatoes and finally the cheese, stirring continuously and adding (if needed) some stock. The very last moment we add some chopped peppermint.
We plate putting over the risotto two shrimps per portion and of course extra mint.
