Ingredient: onion

Aunt Humla’s Greek Beans

(I give these five meow meow beans)

This reminds me of when Hanna used to make hummus, when we lived with my brother in Lidingö. When the hummus came out particularly good, Olov asked “what do you put in this, drugs?”.

I can’t tell you why these beans are so goddamn good. I’m not even especially confident you’ll feel the same. But I like them sooooo much I don’t care.

So my aunt isn’t really Greek, or well, in spirit I guess. She had two kids with a Greek man and I’ll just tell you: it’s not a bad food culture to hitch your wagon to. I’m gonna squeeze some more recipes out of her, especially the moussaka, which is I mean… maybe the best food you can put into your body. It’s ridiculous.

But anyway. I found the beans a bit hard to pair with a vegetarian option, besides the obvious (tzatziki and greek salad). The beans are extremely good with barbecued meat, so I wanted to find something similar-ish. I think it’s a good idea to go fairly salty, since the beans themselves are pretty sweet. This time I went with portobellos fried for a loooong time in butter, with a splash of soy in the end and som salt and pepper. Perfect. Really good. Do that. Ok, so let’s go, and thank you Humla, for all the food đŸ™đŸ»đŸ˜‹

Created with Sketch. 2 hours + soaking of the beans Created with Sketch. 10

Ingredients

  • 500 gwhite beans (large, dry)
  • 400 gcrushed tomatoes
  • 250 golive oil
  • 25 g(1-2 table spoons) of tomato purĂ©
  • 15 gsalt
  • 2 large carrots (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 tomatoes (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 yellow onions (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 sticks of celery
  • 1 bouillon cube or equivalent amount of condensed broth meant for circa 0.5 L of water
  • Some peppercorns
  • A couple of bay leaves
  • Fresh parsley

Directions

So this is easy, but takes a bit of time, but it’s mostly waiting on things so you have plenty of time to prepare the mushrooms and sides or whatever.

In preparation, soak the dry white beans for at least 3-4 hours, preferably over night, in plenty of cold water.

  1. Bring 2.5 liters of water to a boil. Add 10 (to 15) g of salt and the soaked beans (sift away the soaking water first of course). Chop the onions (2-3) into big slices and add them as well. Boil/simmer for 45 minutes. Oh, also: if you wanna do the mushrooms, now’s the time! Just put 5 portobello mushrooms in a pan with 50 g of butter, let them sizzle away on low heat for 2 hours, flipping them occasionally. Finish with a splash of soy, some salt and pepper and serve them in thin slices!
  2. While they’re boiling away. Chop up the celery, carrots and tomatoes. When 45 minutes have passed, throw them in as well.
  3. Add the crushed tomato (400 g). Also add the olive oil (250 g/ml), the pepper corns (10-15), the bouillon cube (or substitute), the bay leaves (a couple) and the tomato paste (25 g/ 1-2 tablespoons. There has been some translation issues with tomato stuff, so: this is what I mean with tomato paste). Let it boil for another 30 minutes.
  4. While waiting, turn the oven to 175 degrees C. After the 30 minutes of boiling, pour everything in a deep oven tray and sprinkle it with chopped parsley. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes (+/- 10 min depending on the oven).
  5. To be done, it should “set” a bit. If you stir it a bit, it should be thick but absolutely not dry (then you’ll need to add water) and also not runny. You’ll get it.
  6. As with many foods, now you have to wait. I’d say for at least 30 minutes before eating. This really is better when not piping hot. Actually, it doesn’t even has to be hot at all. But the upside of this is that you can use the time to make a sweet ass tzatziki (3-4 dl greek, firm yogurt, 1 grated cucumber with the juice squeezed out of it, 2 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar and lots of olive oil) and a greek salad!

 

So that’s it. It’s also excellent to save in the fridge for days and days so don’t worry about the ten portions. They’ll come in handy!

 

Black Bean and Portabello Burgers

(lean, mean, bean-machine)

These ones are real companions in our household. When I don’t quite know what to make, I often think: “Eeh, I’ll just do some black bean burgers”. They’re good with oven baked potatoes and bearnaise sauce. They’re great with mashed potatoes and roasted garlic and mushroom sauce (as in the pictures). They’re really good as just… hamburger burgers as well actually.

The black beans, combined with the umami heavy confit onion and portobello mushrooms, give them a really rich and deep taste. Using bread is really good for consistency and the cheese is… well cheese is pretty great.

I like using soy as it together with the rest gives some meaty tones, but I get that that might not be for everyone (to make it more like meat I mean). But from this base-recipe you can basically do whatever. Fresh herbs, chili, spices, you go wild!

Created with Sketch. 1.5 hours Created with Sketch. 6

Ingredients

  • 760 gof black beans (boiled and in liquid, weight including the liquid)
  • 2 (or 3) portabello mushrooms
  • 4 eggs (a bit depending on the size)
  • 100 gcheese (e.g. Gouda cheese)
  • 2 small carrots (80 g)
  • 1.5 yellow onions
  • 3 slices of bread
  • Some tomato purĂ©, mustard, soy sauce, salt and pepper
  • 75 gbutter
  • 3 dloil (rapeseed)

Directions

  1. Start by making the confit onion (which is onion boiled for a long time in oil). Chop the onion (1 yellow onion) into sizes of about 1/4 onion rings. Heat up oil enough to cover the onions (3 dl) to low/medium temperature and let the onion simmer in the oil for about 30 minutes.
  2. While the onion is cooking, chop the portobello mushrooms and put them in a pan with a generous amount of butter (50g), on medium heat. After ca 5 minutes, take the heat down to low, add salt, pepper and the tomato puré (1 tablespoon) and mustard (1 tablespoon). Stir and leave on low heat for 20-30 minutes (turn the mushrooms over now and again).
  3. Tear the bread into small pieces (3 slices in pieces about 1 cm x 1 cm), crack the eggs (4) and stir the eggs and the torn bread together.
  4. Sift away the fluid from the beans and put them in a bowl. Finely chop 1/2 yellow onion, finely grate a carrot (and squeeze out some of the the juice) and mix both in with the beans. Mix together with whatever but not with an immersion blender or mixer. Take a fork or something and stir until some beans have become squished but some are still whole-ish.
  5. Grate the cheese (100 g) and put it in to the mix. Sift away the oil from the confit onion and add the onion and the fried mushrooms.
  6. Now, the trick is to get the texture just right, by adding bread crumbs and/or flour/ potato flour. You should be able to form semi-firm, semi-sticky balls from the mix, but if there’s too much flour/bread/bread crumbs, the burgers get too dry when cooked. Personally, I more often make the mistake of making the mix to firm so try to err on the side of a looser, stickier mixture. More breadcrumbs can always be added in later. When I did these ones I didn’t use any breadcrumbs (or flour) other than the coating (see list item 9).
  7. Use salt, pepper and soy until the mix is to your taste. I usually put a bit of vinegar in the mix, but then again: I fucking love vinegar.
  8. So now the base mixture is done. If you have the time, let it set in the fridge for an hour or so.
  9. Make balls from the mixture and cover them in bread crumbs. Heat up the remaining butter (25 g) and some rapeseed oil to medium-high heat in a pan. Put the balls in the pan and gently push down on them with a spatula. If the consistency is right they should flatten easily (they should flatten slightly but not all the way under their own weight). Fry for about 5 minutes on each side. And you’re done!


These are best about five minutes off the stove, when they’ve settled a bit (become a bit firmer) but are still warm. Fry them the last thing you do before serving up the food.

Lemon Risotto

(the unexpected risotto)

It was probably early two thousands, and together with a friend we managed to crash a fancy graduate lunch in a fancy restaurant in Napoli (Zi Teresa), that was only intended for the close family and teachers of this other friend of ours. The family was clearly not super happy about our presence, but we made friends with a couple of teachers. For the first time I had Lemon Risotto. It was good, but not exceptional. While we were dining, and commenting on it, the very Professor that discussed my friend’s thesis, leaned towards me, and in a complicit tone said: this one is made with butter, which together with the lemon gives it a bit too much of a cream cheese feeling. You should try with an egg yolk instead, it’s much better.

The professor was absolutely right, and I never had the chance to thank him, so here we go: thank you professor, that was a good tip.

Created with Sketch. 30 min cooking + 30 for making the vegetable stock Created with Sketch. 2

Ingredients

  • for the vegetable stock
  • 1 potato
  • 1 stick of celery
  • 1 onion
  • 1 carrot
  • for the risotto
  • 1 onion
  • olive oil to taste
  • 160 grCarnaroli rice
  • 150 grwhite wine
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 egg yolk
  • parmigiano to taste

Directions

Preliminary notes:

  • in a perfect world everybody should be able to have access to the Amalfi coast lemons, the most beautiful and intense lemons ever, but since most of you readers don’t live in the south of Italy, well, I’m sorry. Try to find the most beautiful and fresh and expensive lemon, because lemon is key here.
  • you can choose to use or not use the parmigiano in the end, I like both versions.

  1. Start by making the vegetable stock: throw one potato (peeled and halved), one stick of celery, one onion (peeled and halved) and one carrot in a pot of salted water, and let it cook for 30 min. You can do this in advance, but the stock must be hot when you start making the actual risotto.
  2. In a different pot on medium/high heat, pour a couple of tablespoons off olive oil, add the onion finely diced, and let it sauté for 5 minutes.
  3. Add the rice and stir it continuously. Let it toast for a couple of minutes, the rice will develop a hard surface, which will slow down the cooking process a bit, adding to the final creamyness. Add the white wine and keep stirring until it evaporates.
  4. Finely grate the peal of the lemon, and then squeeze out the juice. Add half of the peel and half of the juice to the pot, stirring again and again.
  5. Now you can start adding the broth: again, stirring the rice continuously, add a first ladle of stock and keep stirring until the stock is consumed: you have to be quick with the next ladle of broth or you will burn everything.
  6. Repeat point .5 until the rice is cooked, about 15/20 minutes in total. It’s important that the final risotto is on the firm side. Please don’t all a lot of stock all together, we want the starch to come out of those grains a little at the time to make the risotto more creamy.
  7. Take the pot off the heat and finally add the rest of the lemon peel and juice, the parmigiano (if you want to), and the egg yolk: be very quick to stir in the egg yolk. If you let it sit there for too long without stirring, you will end up with an unpleasant taste of cooked egg.
  8. Feel free to add some black pepper, freshly chopped parsley, and some more greated lemon peel.

 

Bouillabaisse with Aioli

(it's French soup!)

Bouillabaisse is a French soup. I know, fancy! That is the extent of my knowledge about Bouillabaisse. It is very, very good though. I’m just saying that there might be stuff in the recipe that is deeply disturbing for those of you with a profound historical and cultural connection to Bouillabaisse. If that is the case, I hope you will be able to enjoy it anyway. Hopefully it won’t be like for those dudes who thought that the new(ish) Ghostbusters movie ruined their childhood because it cast women. But maybe it will? Maybe someone’s childhood will be ruined because I am suggesting you to put some crushed tomatoes in a Bouillabaisse? Food and words are powerful things.

A little bit about the actual recipe. Three things are vitally important. 1) Do your own broth. 2) Don’t overcook the fish. I will get to how how to avoid overcooking in the instructions. And 3) … ok, two things are vitally important.

The base of the soup is as it is with most soups; a great broth. I really like shellfish broth, so I often use one made from shrimp shells, but any seafood-based broth is good. Besides the broth, what gives the soup its character is the mix of fennel, orange, saffron and white wine. I also think tomato goes really well with all this which is why I put some crushed tomatoes and tomato puré in mine.

It is really quite spectacular. I don’t mean my version but just… in general. Bouillabaisse is quite spectacular. To the instructions!

Created with Sketch. Roughly 2-3 hours Created with Sketch. 5

Ingredients

  • For the soup
  • 50 gceleriac
  • 120 gfennel
  • 150 gonion (one large onion)
  • 60 gcarrot (one or two depending on the size)
  • 200 gcrushed tomatoes
  • 300 gwhite wine
  • 25 gbutter
  • 0.5 gsaffron
  • 10 gtomato purĂ© (a spoon full)
  • The juice from one orange (should be 0.5-1 dl juice)
  • The peel from 1/2 an orange
  • 300 gcod
  • 300 gsalmon
  • 200 gshrimp
  • For the aioli
  • 2 egg yolks (30-40g)
  • 200 grapeseed oil (2 dl)
  • 10 gmustard
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • Some vinegar, salt and pepper to taste
  • For the broth
  • The shells from the shrimp
  • 2 large onions
  • 2 carrots
  • Some celeriac
  • Some fennel
  • A couple of bay leaves, salt and pepper to taste

Directions


So. Lot’s of ingredients but I promise: not complicated at all.

  1. Brine the fish. This is very optional but I really think brining is great for fish. What’s brining? Well it’s simply putting something in salty water. This gives more juice to the fish (or meat) and a nice natural saltiness. Dissolve 50-60 g of salt in 1000g (1L) of water and let it cool down (use 1/3 or something of the water to dissolve the salt by heating it on the stove, then mix that with cold water). Cut the fish into pieces (approximately 3 x 3 cm) and put it into the brine. Put it in the fridge.
  2. Put the oven on 250 C and peel the shrimp (save the peeled shrimp for later). Spread the shells across an oven plate and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes. The shells should become white, not burnt.
  3. Bring two (2) liters of water to a boil. Cut the veggies into pieces and put them in. Add the grilled shrimp shells.
  4. Put the bay leaves in with som pepper and let the broth simmer for at least an hour, more if you have the time. It should reduce to half the initial volume. Salt to taste at the end (if the broth is nice and salty in the beginning it will be horribly over-salty when reduced).
  5. Pour the broth through a sift to remove the veggies, pepper corns (if you’re using that) and bay leaves.
  6. When the broth is finished, chop the celeriac, carrot and fennel into small cubes and finely chop the onion (note: not the cooked vegetables from the broth).
  7. Put the butter  and some oil in a big pot on medium/ high heat. Fry the chopped up vegetables for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes, put in half of the saffron, all of the tomato puré (10 g/ a spoon full), the peel from half an orange and stir.
  8. Pour in the broth, the wine, the juice from the orange, the crushed tomatoes (200 g) and bring to a simmer.
  9. Put in the other half of the saffron and add salt and pepper to taste. This is the finished product so taste and adjust a lot of times. Use salt/ sugar/ vinegar to get the balance exactly as you want it.
  10. Now turn the stove off, put a lid on the soup and let it rest on the (now off) stove plate.
  11. Make the Aioli. Aioli is mayonnaise with some garlic so it’s real easy (here’s our recipe for plain ol’ mayo including video). Mix the egg yolks with the mustard, some vinegar, salt, pepper and one finely chopped (or pressed) clove of garlic.
  12. Whisk intensely (or use an electric mixer, immersion blender or other appropriate machine) while carefully (ok, not that carefully) pouring the oil into the mix. As always, balance with salt/ pepper/ vinegar or lemon, at the end. If you’re only whisking by hand, the Aioli will be a bit “fluffier”or less dense, than if you do it with a kitchen mixer or immersion blender. I like the consistency you get with an immersion blender.
  13. Now take the fish (in brine) out of the fridge and sift away the brine.
  14. Put the fish and peeled shrimp into the soup and let that rest for about 5 minutes. The after heat from the soup will cook the fish perfectly. Just to be completely clear: you DO NOT need to cook the fish in boiling/ simmering soup, the after heat is enough. The soup is still 80-90 C and fish like cod and salmon is best when around 50 C in the center of the pieces.
  15. Serve with a generous dollop of the Aioli, some bread and a bit of fresh herbs.

I really love this dish. And it’s really nice if you’re hosting a dinner party. If you prepare the broth, the fish (by putting it in brine, which you can do the night before if you want) and Aioli beforehand, you can really do this from start to finish in less than 30 minutes.

Bon appétit!

Almond balls

(vegetarian meatballs for the people)

We’re an almost exclusively vegetarian household. My girlfriend is vegetarian you see (or actually a recent convert to Pescetarianism, so fish if back on the menu, yeiij!). This has led me to develop a lot of  vegetarian alternatives through the years, which has been really great. I’m not especially fond of the concept of mimicking meat. Soy meat, quorn, oumph, pulled oats, beyond meat… I mean, I get it. If people like it: cool. I’m just sayin’ that the best of that kinda thing I’ve ever had has never been anywhere close to the meat equivalent. Often, they just feel like attempts to create a vessel for heavy spicing.

I like when you try to use unprocessed stuff and make something different but equally great. Like portabello hamburger, or black been tacos, or carrot and parsnip burgers. Or: almond balls. So let me get the irony out of the way. Yes, they look a lot like meatballs. Yes, they kinda taste a bit like meatballs. But they’re not meatballs. And they’re made from scratch.

The challenge when making vegetarian alternatives to burgers or ball-shaped things is consistency. It’s real easy to make something that sticks together if you’re fine with the end result being dry and dense and boring. It’s equally easy to make something juicy that’ll fall apart. I think this recipe strikes a real good balance, but it can take a while to get a hang of the nuances. I got the gist of this recipe from my girlfriends mother (something akin to this Swedish recipe I think), but I’ve tinkered with it quite a lot through the years.

Some of the ingredients are cooked before going into the batter and the balls are boiled in broth before being fried in the pan. All this adds up to a really juicy and rich end result. The consistency can be tricky however. But practice makes perfect so let’s practice!

Special Equipment

  • Kitchen wizard/ Blender/ Immersion blender
Created with Sketch. 60 minutes Created with Sketch. 5-6 servings (or ca 40 almond balls)

Ingredients

  • 150 galmonds
  • 150 gmushrooms (any mushroom really, I use forrest champinjons)
  • 150 ggouda cheese
  • 1.5 yellow onions (about 150g)
  • 100 gcarrots
  • 50 gbutter
  • 25 gChinese soy
  • 40 gbread crumbs
  • 10 gpotato flour (or normal flour)
  • 2 slices of white bread
  • 4 eggs (or 5, depending on the size)
  • 5 gsweet mustard
  • Some sriracha
  • Salt and pepper
  • For the broth
  • 2 yellow onions
  • 2 carrots
  • Bay leaves, salt and pepper

Directions

  1. Put a big pot with 3 liters of water on the stove. Peel and roughly chop 2 onions and 2 large carrots and add them to the pot. Add salt, pepper and bay leaves. Let it come to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Don’t salt to much as it will reduce somewhat. The end result should be a quite lightly salted broth.
  2. Chop the mushrooms and add them to a pan with ca 2/3 of the butter and some rapeseed oil. Start out on high heat, then lower to low/medium. Add salt, white pepper as well as the mustard and some Sriracha. Let this fry for 10-ish minutes before adding one chopped yellow onion.

  3. While the above is frying on low heat (under a lid if you have it), quickly boil the almonds in water (like a minute). Rinse the almonds under cold water. Now peel the almonds….. I know. Fun. Two things: 1) You can skip it and just use them with the peelings. 2) Alternatively, put the almonds in a colander and take handfuls of almond and squeeze them together over and over. This removes most of the peels and really makes the whole thing a lot more bearable.
  4. Crack the eggs (all four) in a mixer (or in a bowl if you’re using a immersion blender), then add the almonds. Mix to a paste. The consistency varies with the size of the eggs and the type of mixer. If it’s a bit loose, don’t worry. You can either add some more almond now (not too much thou, less than 50g) or adjust the consistency at the end (see instruction number 11). The important thing is the the almonds are properly chopped/blended.


  5. By now, the mushrooms and onion should look something like this.
  6. Add it to the egg-almond-mix and blend it a bit.

  7. Peel and finely grate the carrots. Squeeze out the carrot juice. You can throw away the juice, or save it. Or drink it. Grate the cheese finely. Add the grated carrot and cheese in with the rest and stir.
  8. Rip up the bread into small pieces (or dice it with a bread knife). If the edges of the bread are hard, don’t use them. Put the pieces of bread in with the rest, add the soy sauce, the vinegar, the bread crumbs, the potato flour and some salt and pepper. Stir together.
  9. At this point, you can add whatever. Making these for Christmas? Add som allspice why don’t you? Or maybe som fresh parsley, some chili or basil? Taste and adjust with salt, pepper, soy, vinegar and/or other things to your liking. The level of salt and such should be as you want the end result to taste.
  10. The consistency should now allow you to make quite firm balls from the mix. Like such:
  11. If you think it’s to dry: add another egg. If it’s to loose: add some bread crumbs and/or flour. Roll a lot of balls with a diameter of about 3 cm. “Quite small meatballs” to ball-park it for you.
  12. (You can skip this step and go straight to frying, I commonly do. It does add something thou) Now we’re going to boil the balls in broth before frying them. Sift the broth to remove the onion and carrot pieces. Put a frying pan with some butter and oil on medium/high heat. Bring the sifted broth to a boil and add 10-15 of the almond balls. Let them simmer in the broth for ca 3 minutes before adding them to the frying pan. Be careful as the can be quite fragile. Turn them gently after a minute. Continue to turn them in the pan until brown all around. Repeat.


  13. They’re best as they’ve cooled down a tad but not too much, so eat them promptly!

These are really great as a vegetarian alternative to meatballs but they’re also just awesome in general. We usually have them with what’s on the plate in the first photo: mashed potatoes, sweetened lingonberries and garlic sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Get the hang of the consistency, add some of your favorite flavors and make’ em your own!

Shrimp and Saffron Risotto

(let's try this without the ketchup)

Risotto is just the best thing. I know that now. However, when I was younger (probably well in to my twenties actually) I thought risotto was
 something other than it is. At home, it was more akin to fried rice, with some chopped ham or chicken and quite commonly: a mix of peas, corn and paprika (this one!). In the school diner risotto was a weird, gooey meat ragu type thing with rice in it, that for some reason always tasted aggressively sweet. Like really ketchupy sweet. Most likely explained by them putting a LOT of ketchup into it. Actually… thinking about it: growing up, the combination rice and ketchup was a strangely frequent occurrence.

So let’s just get some things straight about what risotto actually is. It’s rice, and it can be any type of rice. Most commonly though, it’s a type with quite large grains that release starch when cooked in a way that creates a wonderfully creamy texture. It’s broth, it’s wine (usually white) and almost always cheese (usually parmigiano). So what’s up with that rice? Well, it has to do with the chemical composition of the starch. Here’s some science stuff from Serious Eats:

“Rice contains two molecules that make up its starch content, amylose, and amylopectin. Generally speaking, rices with a higher proportion of amylopectin to amylose will tend to soften more completely and thicken their sauce more strongly. All risotto starts with a short- to medium-grain form of rice high in amylopectin. It’s the exact ratio of amylose to amylopectin that determine the final texture of your rice and sauce.”

In Sweden, you tend to see three type of grains meant for risotto: Arborio, Carnaroli and Avorio. Arborio has the largest grain and creates the most creamy result. Carnaroli gets you a firmer result and Avorio even more so (I tend to really like Avorio). Obviously, what dish you’re preparing can guide the type of rice, but make sure to try them all to see which you like best in various situations.

This is my favorite kind of run-of-the-mill risotto recipe and it’s real easy to make.

Ingredients

  • For the risotto (including shrimp and garnish)
  • 330 grisotto rice (in this recipe, I use Arborio)
  • 0.3 lwhite wine (3 dl)
  • 80 gparmigiano reggiano
  • 1 lshrimp broth
  • 800 gunpeeled shrimp
  • 1 handfulfresh parsley
  • 1 yellow onions
  • 0.5 gsaffron
  • 50 gbutter
  • 30 golive oil
  • For the broth
  • salt and white pepper corns
  • roasted shrimp shells
  • 3 yellow onions
  • 3 bay leaves

Directions

This recipe is for 4-5 people. Generally, some 80 g of rice equals a big portion. From start to finish this should take circa 1 hour and 30 min, if you’re starting from scratch.

A couple of things are really important when making risotto in general and this one specifically.

The first, and this is imperative, non-negotiable: do the broth yourself. This is just how I feel. Sure, in a pinch you can maaaaybe use one of those reduced broth-on-a-bottle things but never ever use broth cubes to make risotto. Never. They have an aftertaste, an off-flavor that’s really noticeable. So that’s what I think.

Secondly, always buy shrimp with the shells (frozen are fine) and do not rinse the shrimp with water after you’ve pealed them as that just flushes so much taste down the drain.

And hey, one more note: use a nice dry wine, not to sweet.

So about those shrimp:

  1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C. Put a big pot of water on the stove. While you wait on the oven to get warm and the water to come to a boil: peel the shrimp.
  2. Spread the shrimp shells (not the shrimp) on an oven pan and when the oven is ready, roast the shells until pinkish white (about 10 min). Image is showing the shells before roasting, sorry about that… I’ll try to remember to update it in the future.
  3. Peel three of the yellow onions, cut them into quarters and put them in the boiling water with the bay leaves, some salt, pepper corns and when they’re ready: the roasted shrimp shells. Why roast the shells you ask? Well, it gets yummier. But why? I’m embarrassed to say: I’m not quite sure and haven’t been able to find anything really useful about it either (please tell me if you know). Let this mix simmer for at least some 30 minutes or so. And by the way, you can put other stuff in the broth. Celery, parsnip, carrots? Go to town!
  4. While waiting on the broth (there’s a whole thing on what’s important when making broth. We’ll do a thing about it at some point I’m sure),  put some butter and olive oil in a pan and take it up to medium heat. Dice the last onion finely (not important that it’s that fine) and put it in the hot pan.
  5. When the onion has turned clear, add the rice.
  6. After a couple of minutes raise the heat somewhat (to 8-9 on a 12-point-scale) and then pour the wine into the pan.
  7. Taste the broth to make sure that it’s salty, shrimpy sweet. It should a bit less salt than you want the end product to be (you can always adjust the salt level upwards later. Too much salt however? Well… you’re kinda stuck with that).
  8. Add a couple of deciliters of broth and start stirring continuously. Why are we stirring? Well, it’s to dissolve the starch into the liquid, allowing for the creamy end result. You don’t have to stir all the time though, but make sure to do it regularly. Adjust the heat to create a light simmer in the pan.
  9. So I listed 1L of broth in the ingredients list but I don’t find it very useful to give an exact volume. It differs with the grain type, the brand and how much you stir. The important part is to continuously add scoops of broth until the rice is almost done. This should take about 20 minutes. Taste both the liquid and the rice when you’re getting close to the 20 minute mark.
  10.  When the rice is just about done, i.e still a bit hard but almost eatable, you should try to adjust the consistency to be runny, quite a lot runnier than you want the end product to be (it will set due to after-heat and further stirring). Grate the parmigiano, put it in with the rest and stir.
  11.  Add the rest of the butter in cubes (should be about 30 g left) and finally: the saffron. Take the pan off the heat and stir.
  12. So this is really the practice-makes-perfect part of the whole shabang. The consistency should at this point still be less firm than how you want to serve the risotto and the rice should be ever so slightly more al dente than how you want it to be eaten. It continues to cook when resting off the stove, which it should do for about 10 minutes. Stir it every couple of minutes. Regarding the consistency I think (and this is mostly a preference thing) that the end result should be such that when you put a scoop of the risotto on the plate, it slowly expands out towards the edges of the plate under the weight of its own pressure. If you (after letting it rest) think that it’s to firm, just add some broth and stir.
  13. Heat a pan to medium/high heat with olive oil. Put one or a couple of garlic cloves in with the oil for a bit. Quickly fry the peeled shrimp (about 30 seconds) and take the pan of the stove. Do this in batches if the shrimp fill up the pan. You want them to be fried, not boiled and too much shrimp = too much water in the pan = boiled shrimp.
  14. Put some risotto on a plate. If you want it to spread nicely over the plate you can punch the underside plate with your palm a couple of times.
  15. Top it off with the fried shrimp, a splash of lemon juice, some black pepper and chopped fresh parsley. Fucking awesome.

…and then put a generous amount of parmigiano on top right, YES! Right..? Nope. Sorry.

I have conferred with my Italian colleague and: no parmigiano on seafood. The gods’ll get piiiiissed.

But hey, maybe you’re just not that religious? You do you.