New Years - champagne risotto

Champagne Risotto
Please, whatever you do, don’t open a bottle of champagne specifically for this. I mean, not unless you want to, and drink the other half of the bottle as you eat, as a wallowing-in-luxury way to welcome in the New Year, in bed preferably.      Nigella

Well my first "Feast" attempt was for New Years.   There were a few other recipes which I would love to try, but as New Years is very quiet in our house as Miki always works, I decided the champagne risotto was the way for us to celebrate.  I did have to open a bottle, but it was one that had been sitting in our "beer" fridge for months. 


The one complication I had was the recipe is for two people and I knew with Saana eating as well and miki's big appetite I would need to make more. Instead of doubling it, I made 1/2 more again and this was a mistake.There was really too much maths and I know I made a couple of mistakes. Next time I will just double it and have it for leftovers.


I collected all the ingredients, and then realised I didn't have any celery, or leeks. So a shopping list was written for these and for the ingredients for the split pea and frankfurt soup which I was planning to cook for new years day.

I rushed up to the local coles, only to discover that they didn't have leeks so I chose a bunch of lovely spring onions instead.


Here are all the ingredients layed out. The Bubbly is missing. Note the special fancy rice I brought.

Here is the champagne 

Step one: Cooking the onions and celery. I don't think I cooked them long enough, when we were eating it, the celery still had a chewy-chrunch which didn't seem right. It was here that I made my first mistake with the quanity of butter. I still don't know if I used too much or too little, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

Step two: Add the rice to the vegetable mix and cook. While you are doing this you heat up the chicken stock with most of the champage mixed into it.

Step three: Add some of the champagne and stir though.

Step four: Slowly add the stock-champagne mix to the rice and stir constantly.

While cooking, I enjoyed the last bit of the bubbly to myself. THis quickly went to my head and I need to grab out the cheese samplers left over from a friend visit before christmas.

This is a photo of the risotto about half cooked. I really enjoyed the stirring. I don't often cook risotto properly, I tend to just cook rice using the absorption method, and using stock. This is good enough for us usually, but I enjoyed the challenge of adding stock and stirring. I find it hard to tell when to add the next ladle, but felt I was getting the hang of it by the end.

We dished up two bowls for us and a plate for Saana.

REVIEW
Miki - It's nice.
Saana- Ate most of it.
Me - I liked it, I think I should have cooked the celery longer before moving onto the next steps.
It was really nice, but like Nigella says I don't I would bother making this unless I had an open bottle of bubbly or white wine that needs to be used up.


Will I make it again - Yes. I would even make it again for New Years, I could see it becoming a tradition for us.   RECIPE