Day 18: Risotto Redux, and What Not to Do with Hot Stock

Dinner tonight was an amazing risotto from the Essential New York Times Cookbook: Risotto with Radicchio and Sausage. Sausage and radicchio are two of my favorite foods, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. I opted for chicken sausage and decided to half the recipe when I noticed that it made 8 "Main Dish Servings." (Jim has a big appetite, but I thought that was a little much...)

To prepare the risotto, I chopped a small onion, then cut two small heads of endive and a head of radicchio into shreds with a santoku knife. The onion and sausage went into the hot Le Creuset with a tablespoon of butter and a little olive oil. After two minutes, in went 1/4 cup of white wine. After the liquid had nearly cooked off, I threw in the endive and half of the radicchio and cooked it until wilted.

After all of this deliciousness, I added Arborio rice and tossed it until coated in the oil. (If you have never made risotto, the trick is to coat the rice in oil/butter/fat, then slowly add hot liquid a little at a time, stirring frequently, so that the rice cooks slowly, releasing its creamy starch into the dish. A good risotto is a beautiful thing.)

I began adding my stock, and that's where my troubles began. Even though the stock had been warming on a back burner while all of these other things were happening, my first scoopful of warm stock was not warm at all. In fact, it was ice cold. I raised the heat to high, kept stirring my risotto, and after about five minutes reached for another cup of stock. Lukewarm this time. (Note to self: investigate that burner.) Jim put the lid on the pot, and the next time I checked, the stock was boiling.

It was still boiling a few minutes later, when I reached for another half-cupful, somehow splashing myself with a few drops in the process. Ever the cool cucumber, I jerked my hand at the burn, and poured a quarter-cup of boiling stock down my shirt sleeve. Our 9-year-old neighbor Hedgejo was over for her daily visit with us and our dogs, so I neither screamed as loudly nor said any of the horrible words I imagined, and after a trip upstairs to apply some numbing spray to my wrist, I returned to finish dinner. Luckily, Jim took over stirring duties in my absence.

And that, my friends, is how not to make risotto.

Happily, everything turned out beautifully. After the stock had been absorbed and the rice was al dente, I finished the dish with a little butter, the rest of the shredded radicchio, and some parmesan. It was an incredible mix of bitter and sweet, and I'd make it again in a heartbeat, burns and all.