New Year, new risotto

Red wine risotto with mushrooms and aubergine

Risotto is the nearest thing that we on this blog have to a signature dish. I am keeping the tradition going by writing about a new one that I made on 2 January: mushroom and aubergine, made with red wine.

This combination was a (fairly happy) accident. I went on an unsuccessful shopping trip for some dried mushrooms. (There were already some fresh chestnut mushrooms in the fridge.) Instead, I came back with impulsive purchases of an aubergine and a little jar of something called 'magic umami paste', which I took a punt on because it was reduced to 82p. It's made of various savoury things, including miso, fish sauce (so it's not vegetarian but neither am I), yeast extract and mushroom.

The red wine was planned, though. Red wine risotto is not pretty but it's tasty.

I was cooking for myself and my parents, so I needed to make three portions. Recipes do not usually come in 'for threes' and every risotto recipe seems to have slightly different proportions of everything, so this involved both arithmetic and guesswork. (Despite having maths A-level, I still need to follow the lead of most of Miss Jean Brodie's protegees and count on my fingers 'with accurate results more-or-less'.)

I used:

• 225g arborio rice
• stock made with 750 ml water, a big spoonful of the magic umami paste, a squodge of tomato puree and a sprikle of dried thyme. (It looked reasonably stockish and smelled appetising.)
  
• 100 ml red wine. (I don't remember what sort but it was Portuguese and rather pleasant)
• 150g punnet of chestnut mushrooms
• a small aubergine
• a red onion
• a fat clove of garlic
• butter, olive oil and rapeseed oil
• parmesan (which may actually have been grana padano) and black pepper to finish

I cooked the mushrooms in the risotto and the aubergine separately. The other way round might have worked better because the aubergine was under-flavoured compared to the rest. The overall result was a reasonable success, though.

Happy New Year!

It's not really magic but the risotto did taste quite nice