Chanterelle everything risotto

youI love a really creamy, perfectly made risotto. I love mushrooms. I love chanterelles. Let’s combine the two without saving on the mushrooms. Imagine making a mushroom risotto on home made chanterelle stock, serving it on a bed of creamy chanterelle sauce, and top it with fried chanterelles? That’s what I’m aiming for here.

The stock

In order to make a risotto, you need a stock. Sure, you can add stuff into your risotto and say it has been flavoured with whatever you added. But it’s the stock that will give the whole risotto a flavour. A beef stock will give you a bet risotto. A fish stock will give you a fish risotto. So let’s make a chanterelle stock.

Ingredients for the homemade mushroom stock

• 1 large carrot
• 1 large parsnip
• 250 grams of chanterelles
• A huge pinch of salt (you can make a saltless stock when using it for soups or other dishes were a lot of salt and salty ingredients will be added, but in this case we want to give the rice flavour, including some saltiness)
• A twig of rosemary
• Some olive oil
• 2 liters of fresh water (if you want to go hardcore high-end cook, you should use distilled water)

Instructions for the homemade mushroom stock

1. Heat up some olive oil in a pressure cooker. You can use a normal cooker, but it will take much longer. Also, pressure cookers keep the flavour better. When you feel the wonderful smell of food in a kitchen, that’s flavour escaping (according to some pretentious cooks, but I guess it’s technically true).
2. Peel the parsnip with a peeling and keep the peel. Then keep on peeling it until you have more peel. More and more until you reach the stem of the parsnip. We’re going to use the peel later. As for the stem, cut it into pieces and put them into the pressure cooker.
3. Cut the carrot, and fry it with the parsnip.
4. Add mushrooms
5. Add rosemary
6. After a quick frying to give it a little color and caramelize some of the sugars, add water and salt.
7. Close the lid and cook under pressure for 1 hour.
8. De-pressurize by just letting it cool. Remove lid and let it cook until 60% of the water is gone.
9. Leave it simmering, you’re going to use the hot stock in your risotto making.

The sauce

• 250 grams of chanterelles
• 1/2 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Parsnip peels (from earlier, see above)
• 50 grams of butter (not margarine, butter! It’s not just here as a fat, it’s here for flavour)
• 200 ml fresh full fat cream
• 100 ml chanterelle stock (that you’ve already made, right?)

1. Finely cut the onion and garlic.
2. Brown the butter in a pan, but be careful so it doesn’t burn. As soon as it stops bubbling, and looks a little brownish, it’s done, lower the heat and add the onion and garlic. And parsnip peel.
3. Add mushrooms.
4. Fry until the parsnip peels are all brown, but careful so they don’t burn. They are full of sugars that are absolutely amazing when caramelized but terrible if burnt. Same goes for garlic by the way.
5. Add the stock and cream.
6. Mix it until smooth. Well, it will be grainy because of the mushroom fibers. You could sieve it to really have a smooth sauce, but I like the rustic consistency of the grainy mushrooms. And the flavour!
7. Black pepper.
8. Taste it. If the salt from the stock is enough, then you’re good. If not, add some more salt.

The mushroom risotto

• 1 dl of olive oil
• 1 onion
• 1 dl of cold white wine
• 3 dl of arborio or carnaroli rice (both great for a creamy risotto)
• 1 liter of boiling hot chanterelle stock
• About 3 dl of freshly grated Parmigiano cheese

1. Heat almost all of the olive oil (save a teaspoon or so) in a large pan
2. Add the rice and let it heat up a lot!
3. Throw in the cold white wine. There will be steam, there will be sound, there will be smell, and that’s great. It is said that the grains of rice crack when quickly cooled like this. I don’t have any evidence of this being true, but let’s not upset the Italians on their methods.
4. Add finely chopped onion and lower the heat to medium.
5. Now add about 1/5 of the stock. It will boil as soon as it touches the rice, because both the stock and the pan is already hot.
6. Mix until all the liquid is gone. Now add another 1/5.
7. Keep on doing this for about 20 minutes until the rice is creamy. It should be chewy, but without a hard core in the rice grains.
8. Add grated cheese and the last of the olive oil.
9. Mix well. This is amazing!

Serve it

1. On a hot plate (heat it in the oven) add some sauce
2. Risotto
3. The fried parsnip and chanterelles
4. Some black pepper and a twig of rosemary on top
5. Enjoy your mushroom risotto!