Spinach and Goat's Cheese Risotto

Risotto as a food item probably gets a bad rap from novice cooks because it seems fancy. Really, it's just boiling rice, but you have to stand there and watch it instead of putting the lid on the pan and leaving.   I've made it once before, from a Barefoot Contessa recipe.  Hers was as strict as Jamie's is loosey-goosey.  Cook for two minutes, cook for five minutes, cook for three minutes.  I set my timer so much I thought I was going to break it.  I was relieved to see that this recipe was a little more laid back (as I've come to expect).  

However, the way risotto recipes are written in this book can be a little confusing.  There's a section about how to make them ahead the way restaurants do (cook it three-quarters of the way and then spread it on a greased cookie sheet), which is fine, if you want to make one for a party and don't want to feed your guests mushy rice.  But all the recipes start out with this three-quarter business and then have you finish it and add the titular ingredients.  What if I'm just making the whole thing start to finish?  If I'm making dinner, I'm going to make the whole thing in one shot, not half now and half later.  Also, the quantities are huge -- each recipe serves 8.  So I cut this down a great deal, by using one cup of rice for 2 people, and that made leftovers.

I made the spinach mixture first, and left it to cool.  I'm not coordinated enough to cook down spinach and make sure I'm not burning rice at the same time.  And since I was going to have to cut it up and stir it into hot rice anyway, it wouldn't matter if it cooled a little.  You could just make spinach this was as a stand-alone.  I never would have thought of using nutmeg, but it is a very tasty addition.  

I'm sure a proper chef would smack me upside the head with their All-Clad pan if they saw the lazy way I make risotto.  The first part I do as prescribed (cook onion, add rice, add wine).  But there's no way I'm going to dirty another pan with a bunch of chicken stock that I may or may not use, just so I can scoop it from one place to another.  Nope.  I pour it right out of the box into my 1/2 c measuring cup (a standard ladle holds 1/2 cup, so that's fair).  Just make sure it's a fresh box at room temperature and not out of the fridge.  I've never heard the exact reason why the stock is supposed to be warm, but the rice can take it.  I've done this twice, and it comes out fine.  Shhh.  Don't rat me out.  

The somewhat difficult part about risotto is that you need to actually stand there and watch it.  If you have attention span problems, this is probably not the dish for you.  Add stock, stir, stir, look, stir, stir.  It takes a couple minutes between each addition of stock for the rice to absorb it.  I look for the mixture to develop the kind of bubbles that you see in a pancake that's ready to flip -- the ones that stay, like little holes.  I think I added stock 5 or 6 times, so that's 2 1/2  to 3 cups, until the rice was no longer crunchy.  This takes about 30 minutes, so wear comfy shoes.

I cut up my now-cooled spinach (by hand, not in a processor, which is why my dish isn't quite so green) and added.  You could serve the risotto like this, without the cheese.  I actually liked it more than after I added the cheese -- it had a sharper flavor and wasn't so creamy.  The cheese was a nice addition, but I think next time I would add less, or find a sharper goat cheese.  Lemon really helps to add back the brightness.

The finished product was fantastic.  If all the other risotto recipes taste this good, I'm going to have a whole new arsenal in my dinner repertoire.  Creamy, a little tart, the earthy green from the spinach.  All good.  Leftovers were also great.   Apart from the recipe being a little confusing to read with the make now/make later stuff, this was very easy to do.