Pea Risotto with Shrimp

Oh, so far behind with the blogging. Will jump to tonight, and catch up with the other stuff over the next days.

This was inspired by (a) lethargy (the strong desire not to leave the house to do any food shopping) and (b) Emily Weinstein's post on the NY Times the other day. She's great - just learning to cook (like me, but much younger), and a bit anxious about it all (like me, but braver). So, anyway, she valiantly cooks this risotto, and then has to put up with the chattering classes weighing in on how she didn't use a real fish stock, etc., etc. Life is cruel.

Not that I didn't have my own problems:

Mini-cat sitting on the recipe...









And popping up onto counters, sticking noses into parmesan, and other illegal activities that weren't captured on film.

But considering all that, it went pretty well.

The Recipe: Pea Risotto with Shrimp

Didn't do Emily's recipe - spotted this one on A Spoonful of Sugar. Can't remember how I got to her site - foodgawker? She's from Bristol (UK), and it was nice to read about how it's spring over there. It would have made me homesick, except that I'm going next week, and it'll be cold and miserable in the Midlands.

The recipe is great, highly recommended. She did it with scallops, but we had shrimp in the freezer, and I'm not scared of them any more. Wondered if Jack might think it a bit girly (we've been eating quite a few veggie-ish things recently), but he loved it.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Didn't bother simmering the stock, thinking it was kinda hot already. But I think that was a mistake, as the rice did seem to take longer to cook. Managed to use the right kind of rice this time, and only had to pick out a couple of burned bits.

Anyway, delicious. Simple and rich at the same time. Didn't have any pea shoots, obviously, so that's a bit of old parsley - artistic, huh?

Pix

Adding the pea puree











On the plate - have now found a "macro" setting on camera, so that may help a bit