Type: Seafood

Salmon Pudding

(don't worry, it's not a fish dessert)

This is a real Swedish classic. As in Britain, also in Sweden a “pudding” can be both a dessert and a savory dish (unlike in Britain it can also mean an attractive person). This is… kind of a gratin I guess? There’s another traditional thing in Sweden called Cabbage pudding (coming on the blog sometime in the future), which is completely different from Salmon pudding so the Swedish word for savory “pudding” doesn’t mean much more than “stuff put together in an oven shape”, at least not to my knowledge. As you never now how traditional something you perceive as traditional really is, I did some light googling to get a sense of the history and it does seem to have been around quite a while. It is mentioned in the early 19th century, thou I would guess the recipe has gone through some changes since then. Presumably lemon wasn’t something that people had in general. On the other hand, maybe Salmon pudding wasn’t something ordinary people had? The good news is that all you ordinary people can have it now!

As it turns out, it’s also perfectly adapted to modern society as it’s an ideal lunch box meal. Easy to divvy up in pieces, well suited to be reheated in a microwave and you know…. ridiculously good, which is a big plus in my book.

It’s also one of these dishes that almost makes itself. Yes, there’s a bit of light seasoning but for the most part, the flavors come from the ingredients themselves and there’s not many of those. The only real hassle is slicing the potatoes and the onion which is why you should really have a kitchen mandolin handy.

Let’s get to it!

Special Equipment

  • Kitchen mandolin
Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 8

Ingredients

  • 1 kgpotatoes (low starch)
  • 500 gcold smoked salmon
  • 2 yellow onions
  • 1 pot of dill
  • 6 normal sized eggs
  • 3 dlmilk
  • 3 dlcream
  • 350 gbutter
  • Some salt and black pepper

Directions

  1. Put the oven on 225 C.
  2. Smear the bottom of an oven pan with butter (50 g). Thinly slice potatoes and onion (preferably with a mandolin) and spread across the bottom. Sprinkle the surface with salt and black pepper. It’s hard to give any exact measure regarding the salt. It depends on how salt the salmon is, but it shouldn’t be a lot.
  3. Add a layer of salmon, then another layer of potato, onion and dill. Another sprinkle of salt and pepper (for each layer of potato). Repeat until you’re out of stuff.

  4. Mix the eggs (6), the milk (3 dl) and the cream (3 dl) in a bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt and a couple of dashes of black pepper, then pour the mix over the layers of potato, onion and salmon.
  5. Finish by spreading the surface with flakes of butter (100 g), more dill, the juice from 1/2 a lemon and another light sprinkle of salt.
  6. Put the pan into the oven for about 40-45 minutes (225 C). When it’s done the potatoes should have some firmness left and the top of the pudding should be ever so slightly burnt.
  7. Serve with clarified butter (200 g), some fresh dill and a slice of lemon.


This is actually a sort of summer dish, probably because of the fresh dill, but don’t let that stop you!

Cod, potato, green peas and hollandaise

(cod wonder)

Sometimes… most of the time..? All the time?! No, probably most of the time, the simple stuff is the best. Cod, potatoes, butter sauce. That’s perfect, isn’t it? I think so. I’m going to complicate stuff a bit (duh) but the basis of this dish is really simple. A few ingredients and very straight forward flavors.

We eat a lot of fish in Sweden and cod is kind of the king of the fishes. Or something. I tried to find the translation for this specific part of the cod (the back fillet) but I… well I failed. Maybe the English-speaking world does not make the distinction?

In this recipe I’m cooking the fish with the sous vide technique but it’s brilliant pan fried as well. It’s just a little bit easier to get it just right when using sous vide. Btw, I use the ANOVA sous vide machine, which I can really recommend.

So what’s the deal with sous vide? Well, it’s pretty straight forward. Vacuum seal something in a plastic bag with some spices and/or butter or whatever you think might be good. Then put the bag(s) in a temperature controlled water bath at the exakt temperature you want your meat/fish/veggie/whatever to be cooked at, and leave it in there for a long time (as compared to the cooking time using more “traditional” techniques). I think it’s pretty rare to get well prepared fish at “not-high-end”- restaurants, and actually also at many higher end restaurants. Why? It’s almost always overcooked. Dry, overcooked fish is… I mean, it’s not horrible or gross or whatever but it’s just such a waste, right?  When it’s juuuust right, it’s almost falling apart, it’s cooked through but only just so and it’s brilliant. When you’ve had that perfect thing, the overcooked one is such a sad reminder of what could have been. With sous vide, it’s so easy to get it just as you want it and basically impossible to fail. So you should really try it.

Special Equipment

  • Sous vide machine
  • Vacuum sealer
Created with Sketch. 1 hour for the cooking. Simple preparations to be made a couple of hours before cooking starts. Created with Sketch. 6 portions

Ingredients

  • 900 gcod (back) fillet
  • 2000 gsmall (low starch) potatoes
  • 300 ggreen peas
  • 300 gbutter
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1 lemons (possibly two if they're small)
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Quite some salt
  • Some white pepper

Directions

  1. Firstly, we’re gonna prepare the fish. Brining is something that you should do with almost anything fish, poultry or pork. It’s basically letting the meat soak in salt water for a time before cooking. It gives the meat extra moisture and a natural saltiness that is very nice. So: dissolve about 50-60 grams of salt in 300 grams of water in a pot. When dissolved, add 700 grams of ice-cold water to the solution and put in a bowl. Add the fish to the salt water and put in the fridge for a couple of hours (or what time you have)
  2. Fill up a pot with cold water, add the potatoes and A LOT of salt. About 100 g. Seriously. Put it on high heat under a lid. When it boils, turn the stove off and leave the potatoes (under lid) in the boiling warm water. This is a pretty good trick when making potatoes. They come out just right (but check after a while anyway, I wouldn’t want overcooked anything on my conscience after that rant in the intro).
  3. Turn the oven to max.
  4. Set the sous vide machine to 47 or 48 degrees C and 45 minutes.
  5. Take the fish out of the brine. Rinse off the salt water and dry the fillets with some kitchen paper.
  6. Vacuum seal the fillets. Add som spices to the vacuum bag if you want!
  7. Put the bags in the sous vide machine (when it’s at temperature of course).
  8. Now, let’s make hollandaise! Bring a pot of water to a simmer. When it’s simmering put the stove on the lowest heat setting.
  9. Cut the 250 grams of the butter into about 2 cm x 2 cm big cubes.
  10. Mix 30 ml (2 tablespoons) of lemon juice with the egg yolks in a bowl. Put the bowl over the simmering water and heat the mixture while whisking. Use a metal bowl or at least something that can transmit heat. If you use a thick ceramic bowl the yolk/lemon mixture is probably not gonna get hot enough.
  11. When the egg/lemon mixture starts thickening, drop in a butter cube while continuing to stir/ whisk (if the egg/lemon mix thickens very quickly or becomes very thick, take the bowl off the water bath). When the cube has dissolved, drop another one in. Continue until you run out of butter. I use this technique instead of melting the butter first and then pouring it in to the yoke, as I think it’s easier to avoid the sauce breaking doing it this way.
  12. Add cayenne pepper, white pepper and possibly lemon and salt, to you liking. Note that you can’t refrigerate butter sauces. The butter sets and can’t be reheated without breaking.
  13. Pour away the salt water from the potatoes and put them in the oven with som rapeseed oil for 10-15 minutes. Don’t rinse the potatoes. The salty water stuck to the skin will give it the perfect saltiness (i.e.: no need to add any salt when taking them out of the oven)
  14. Put the remaining butter (50 grams) in a pan. Heat the butter in the pan until it starts to brown.  Take the cod out of the vacuum bags and fry them for 10-15 seconds on each side. Be careful, the fillets can be very brittle.
  15. Boil the peas.
  16. Serve with fresh herbs, some fried kale, a squeeze of lemon or something… else?

A couple of notes.

If you use frozen fish (I did), be sure to thaw it gently. The meat easily becomes a bit thready and chewy if not treated carefully.

Why low starch potatoes? Well, low starch potatoes keep their shape better when cooked and therefore fits well for this recipe (I think).

Why all the salt? First of all: It’s not to make it taste very salty. It just gets…. tastier. A bit salty, yes, but not at all over the top (promise). I thiiiink it’s due to osmosis. The salty water is pulled in to the potato due to the higher ion-concentration in the water as compared to the water in the cells in the potato. The salt water adds moisture and saltiness to the potato, much like brining (it is basically brining).

So that’s what I think, but the internet gives… differing explanations. Some say it (the better taste) is due to the potatoes being cooked at a higher temperature (the salt raises the boiling point of the water), but this seems implausible to me as the temperature is very marginally higher. Some do say osmosis but that also doesn’t seem quite open and shut.

I have been planning on writing something about potatoes on the blog, primarily about this. Let’s hope I get to it soon. Oh, and I you know something about this potato stuff, do get in touch.

In the meantime? Get good at making cod and hollandaise. You’re in for a lifetime of tasty joy!

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 puré (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!

The Fresh Fish Soup

(did I mention it's fresh?)

I started to experiment with this recipe last summer, after I spent a weekend in the wilderness of Stockholm’s archipelago, a couple of hours north of the city. It was a nice sunny day, we had a car, we were young, carefree, and most of all we had been driving around aimlessly looking for a place to eat some lunch because we were very very very hungry. Suddenly on our right, a hand-written sign informed us of the existence of a café some hundred meters into the middle of the nothingness; yes, Sweden’s countryside is always like this, a never ending beautiful continuing sequence of fields, cafès, forests, water, cafès, loppis (flee markets), cafès…  that goes on for kilometers and kilometers of virtually uninhabitated land – let alone a few cows and a couple of sheep. Anyway the cafè was nice, a bit hippy for my taste (but hey, this is north Stockholm we’re talking about) with a nice garden, flowers, of course organic stuff everywhere, and long story short I ended up ordering fish soup; I must say I was very sceptic, but I was wrong. The soup was very good and completely different from any fish soup I previously had (which was of course a lot more on the mediterranean side of flavours). A couple of ingredients I wouldn’t have associated with fish at all in my previous life, namely lemon and sour-cream, but again, I was dead wrong.

I’ve tried to make it even more fresh, and boy-oh-boy it really worked! This one is really fresh, light, young, happy, fresh, green, lively, energetic, did I mention fresh? Yes, fresh, cheerful, mild, crisp, brisk, etc. etc.

In a perfect world I would use fresh seafood bought from a fisherman that just came back from a night of fishing, and he would charge a few coins really. But hey, this is Sweden and seafood is embarrassingly expensive, so I had to go for the frozen stuff, I hope you can forgive me.

 

Created with Sketch. 1 hour Created with Sketch. 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 250 gsalmon
  • 250 gcod
  • 100 gshrimp
  • 100 gmussels
  • 3 tablespoonolive oil
  • 1 onion
  • 3 clovesgarlic
  • 2 stickscelery
  • 300 gbaby potatoes
  • 2 parsnip
  • 2 carrots
  • 150 mlcrème fraiche
  • halflemon
  • 125 gcherry tomatos
  • 1 avocado

Directions

  1. Start using a big pot, the bigger you have, since we need the ingredients to have space (I should have used a bigger one when I took the photos). Add olive oil and all the vegetables (onions, garlic, parsnip, carrots, potatoes, celery) chopped in nice little dices of about 1,5 x 1,5 cm. Let it go on high for 5 minutes, stirring it frequently. Add 3 dl of boiling water, salt and pepper to taste and let it cook on medium for 5/10 more minutes, or untill the potatoes are half cooked.
  2. Cut the salmon and the cod in big chunks and add it to the soup. Fish filet is very delicate and we don’t want it to fall apart so please be gentle with it.
  3. After 3/4 more minutes add the shrimp and the mussels, and let everything cook for 5 more minutes.
  4. In a separate frying pan quickly fry the halved cherry tomatoes in olive oil and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. A couple of minutes on high will do, we don’t want them to become mushy at all.
  5. Now add the creme fraiche to the soup (I’d say 2 dl, but you can use less if you feel like). And the juice of half a lemon.
  6. Assemble the bowl: pour some of the soup, and add as topping the cherry tomatoes, 3-4 slices of avocado, grated lemod peel, and some finely chopped parsley.

For those of you (and I mean mostly my south-european friends) who think this is too wierd, with crème-fraiche and lemon, I guess you can keep these ingredients out. But I really think you should dare to try, because it’s really nice: the acidity of crème-fraiche + lemon in contrast with the round flavour of fish is quite something. And it’s fresh, of course.

Alternative Fish & Chips

(don't call it Cod)

Sometimes I feel like the Nordic Countries , when it comes to food, have these “gold-mine” products and they don’t even realize it, let alone make good use of it (or any use, sometimes). Take Baccalà, or Salted Cod, possibly my favorite fish: Norway is the biggest producer of this delicious stuff, and Norwegians don’t even know what it is, I asked! Swedes and Danes same thing, Finnish I don’t really care… Anyway, Baccalà is nothing else than Cod preserved in a lot of salt, so much so that it gets completely dry and hard and smells quite weird. Then you leave it in cold water for a couple of days and the magic happens: the salt melts, the water hydrates the fish again, and the Cod is back in all its white, tender magnificence, plus a delicious salty aftertaste and aroma. For some reasons Norway produces it, and then only sells it to Portugal, Italy and Spain: it’s an export-only product, which is insane.

In Italy Baccalà is cooked in a number of ways, but my favourite is deep-fried after being floured well. But to make things interesting I thought to give it the fish&chips treatment (or my personal version of it), with a proper beer and flour batter. I’m sure that if Britons realize that such thing as salted cod exist, they will ask themselves “why didn’t we think about this before!”. Because of course is way superior: the fish has this very peculiar salt taste (without being salty, unless you don’t desalt it enough), and a bit of a chewy consistency from the drying/re-hydrating process that is just a perfect combination. Of course if you don’t live in Italy, or Portugal, or Spain, you won’t be able to find it easily, but around Christmas I spotted it in one of the fancy markets in Stockholm, and at a price that wasn’t completely unreasonable, which means there’s hope for everybody.

To make the recipe really “alternative fish&chips” here I propose sweet potatoes fries as a side; sweet potatoes fries are one of my ongoing experiments, trying to achive an as-crispy-as-possible fry, given that sweet potatoes will always remain a bit mushy because they just won’t behave, with all their high moisture and low starch ratio. But I’m getting closer…

Special Equipment

  • kitchen thermometer

Ingredients

  • 250 gdesalted Baccalà (I guess you can use Cod if you really can't find the real deal)
  • for the batter:
  • 100 gflour
  • 1 cancold beer
  • 1/2 teaspoonground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoondry parsley
  • 1 teaspoongarlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoonCayenne pepper
  • saltto taste
  • vegetable oilfor deep-frying
  • for the fries:
  • 1 sweet potato

Directions

A couple of things that you might want to know before you start this recipe. The fish should be at room temperature before cooking it, especially since we’re deep-frying it, or it won’t get cooked evenly.
Do not use a lager beer if possible, better be something with a good structure, possibly hoppy but not too bitter; and use it very cold, this is important for the final crispiness of the crust.

  1. If you’re using Cod, because of course you’re a very lazy person and you can’t be bothered to go out and find some Baccalà at your local market, then you can jump to step #2. Otherwise you might need to desalt the fish (you can also find it already desalted, but it’s always good to know how to do it). It’s quite simple: first you wash the Baccalà under running water to get rid of the excess salt, than with a good knife you cut it into portion-pieces, finally you just leave it in a bowl of abundant cold water for 24 hours, changing the water once every 8 hours; if it’s a very thick piece, you might need a bit more time. You can actually taste the raw fish to check if it’s still too salty or not.
  2. Prepare the batter. Mix the flour, the spices and the beer; add the beer a little at the time until the batter reaches the correct consistency, not too liquid and not to thick (mix it well, you want to eliminate any flour lumps). You can of course drink the beer left while you procede with the recipe.
  3. In a deep pan, or in a fryer, or in a wok (this is my weapon of choice usually) heat an abundant amount of oil (we want to deep-fry here!) to a temperature between 170° and 190°. Use you kitchen thermometer for this, it’s very important that the oil is not too hot (if it goes over the smoking point it will burn everything, plus is very bad for your health) or not enough (in which case the fish will become like a sponge for the oil). Dry the fish with a paper towel and gently immerse it into the batter coating it well, and very carefully lower it in the hot oil, one piece at the time. It will only need to cook for 4 or 5 minutes, until it gets a nice golden and crisp crust.
  4. And the sweet potatoes! Well let’s do it  the simple way for now. Just cut the potatoes in typical fries wedges, and fry them in the same oil you used for the fish, making sure the oil temperature stays around 160° C. The potatoes will reach a nice golden-brown color in 5/7 minutes. Make sure to eat them as soon as they’re ready, to keep some of the hard-to-maintain crispiness.

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.