Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 40 min
Servings: 4
Meal type: Dinner
Grocery Cost: $10

Recipe Rating:  

Ingredients

• 1 red onion (large)
• 3 sticks of celery
• 1/3 stick of butter
• Parmesan Cheese
• 320g of risotto (about 80g per person)
• 1.25 L of Vegetable broth
• 1 cup of white wine
• 1 lemon
• 1 bunch of spinach
• Parsley
• Sea salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Instructions

1. Chop the onion and celery into small pieces – I used a small electric chopper (a food processor works as well) only because I cry way too much when I chop onions by hand.
2. Heat up a large saucepan on medium heat and add olive oil. The pan that is ideal is large and flat on the bottom but also with high walls. I used a wok, which is less than ideal. Don’t do it…unless you have no other pans, like me!
3. Also, in a pot, heat up your vegetable broth to get ready to add to the risotto.

4. Add the onion and celery into the saucepan and stir until the vegetables are soft and translucent (and not brown)
5. Add the risotto rice to the pan. Continue to stir for a minute.

6. Add a glass of wine in and continue to stir.
7.Repeat this step every few minutes for about 20 minutes: Add a ladleful of hot vegetable broth – stirring and distributing the liquid evenly through the rice. I’d do this every 3-4 minutes and leave it alone for 1 minute. You’ll see the rice start getting thicker and goo-ey. This texture is perfect. If it’s too soggy, you’re adding too much liquid too fast. If it’s dry, hurry up and add more broth. Don’t add more liquid until everything has been absorbed.
8. Once 20 minutes is up and the rice looks nice and oozy, turn off the heat.

9. You can multitask in this risotto cooking time by grating the parmesan cheese – I had about a 1/4 of a wedge left so used all of it
10. Add the cheese and butter and olive oil after the heat is turned off and mix it around – the risotto gets extra cheesy.
11. In a separate pan (multitask thread #3), heat it up to high heat, add the spinach, some water and salt and pepper for 2 minutes until all the spinach is wilted. Dry it in a colander.
12. Add the spinach and fresh parsley into the risotto.
13. Also season the risotto with salt and pepper.
14. Serve right away (I didn’t do this right away but you should cover it with a lid to keep it warm until you serve.

Quick Notes

I did substitute parsley for spinach. I also used more broth than Jamie Oliver recommended – however I think this is really dependent on how much rice you’re cooking and what it takes to get the right consistency.

Variations

In Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, each risotto recipe called for butter at different times in the cooking process. Also parmesan cheese was part of the cooking video but not actually in the spinach risotto recipe details. I really did enjoy the butter and parmesan cheese added after turning off the stove though. There was also a recipe which called for cutting up fish into chunks to mix into the risotto. I guess it’s like fried rice, where anything goes. I rather liked my simple classic combination of butter, parmesan, spinach and parsley though.

Results

Well, I’d call this first time a great success. I think we might have made too much risotto – it fed 4 for dinner with plenty extra for another 2-3 servings for lunch. I’d definitely make this dish again now that I know it isn’t that hard and doesn’t take too long. We had split the task of risotto and fish between the two of us and was ready to plate within 45 min.