Shrimp Risotto with Strawberries

When Charlie was in Italy they went to a restaurant (before I came) and he had the "risotto du jour". He LOVED it and wrote it down (with the restaurant name) and somehow my brilliant husband didn't realize that it meant "of the day". Oh Charlie. Well, I had him describe it and had never heard of anything like it, so I tried to copy it anyway!

His description was risotto with tiny shrimp (I used regular sized) and strawberries. Sounded weird, but my husband who would never have eaten fish while growing up or taste anything "weird" LOVED this dish - must be a winner.

I decided to go for it. I love making risotto. It's not hard and you get such a creamy yummy dish with no cream. The key is to get short grain arborio rice and stir, stir, stir. The starches of the rice rubbing against each other get released (according to Alton Brown) and it creates the creamy texture.





I don't know why there are raspberries in that pictures - I didn't put them in the risotto. Maybe it was a snack during cooking?

Have one saucepan with chicken broth simmering, and one for your risotto:





Ingredients:
-1 cup of arborio rice
-1 quart of chicken stock
-2 tbs butter
-1 tbs olive oil
-1 small chopped onion
-1/2 cup dry white wine
-1 pound of baby shrimp, raw
-2 cups of chopped strawberries


Directions:
1. Melt your butter and oil until they are hot, and then add the onion. Cook the onion for about 5 minutes on medium heat. Add in your arborio rice and stir, so that the rice "browns" a bit.
2. While your onion was cooking, heat a saucepan with your chicken broth. When it is simmering, reduce the heat to keep the simmer.
3. Add your wine to the rice, and stir until it dissolves, and then begin adding simmering broth, one ladle at a time. After each ladle, stir stir stir, until the stock dissolves.
4. Keep the heat on medium or medium-low, and keep stirring, adding in more broth as it gets absorbed, until you've added almost all of it in.
5. When you have about 1/2-1 cup left of broth left, add in your strawberries and shrimp. Serve immediately.

You can top it with parmesan cheese if you want!

Okay so here was my mistake, in retrospect, but I gave you the corrected recipe up there. I broiled my shrimp, because I wanted them to have that charred taste. But, I should have known - shrimp cook REALLY fast so then they almost overcooked when I added them into the risotto (I did this at the VERY end), but still. Next time, I'm going to go buy those teeny shrimp, and add them in with 5 minutes left of cooking time. Or, use regular size shrimp, but chop them up, and add them into the risotto raw with 5 minutes left of cooking.

I added salt, pepper, and basil to the shrimp, sprayed with pam, and broiled them:




Joanna and oscar had a snack of the broiled shrimp until it was ready:




Three plates with it and some corn, and hot dogs for Aubrey, who I was watching for Victor and Katy that night. Kinda funny how its a similar color to the risotto!

Charlie liked it!


Aubrey was more interested in Maya:


And taking care of the baby:


Okay - that's the sweetest thing ever. She is a little mama already.




Wait actually maybe that is the sweetest thing ever.
Whoops I digressed from shrimp. Enjoy the risotto!