Jamie Oliver’s Easy Risotto!

Ingredients

• approx 1.1 litres/2 pints stock (chicken, fish or vegetable as appropriate)

• 1 knob of butter

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 large onion, finely chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

A bit wilted is always best.

• ½ a head of celery, finely chopped

• 400g/14oz risotto rice. Really Jamie, really?

• 2 wine glasses of dry white vermouth (dry Martini) or dry white wine

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 70g/2½oz butter

• 115g/4oz freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Method

1. Do not assemble all ingredients before you start. Just start, carpe diem.
2. Cut up the onions, garlic and celery but not in equal pieces. Throw them into your Le Creuset crock pot your mother-in-law gave you but be sure to miss part of it, allowing some of the onion and celery to hit the floor.
3. Heat the stock in a separate pan, and when I say ‘heat’ I mean boil the crap out of it.
   

   Buy the cheapest you can find.

4. Warm the olive oil and butter, add the onions, garlic and celery and fry very slowly for about 15 minutes without colouring. Take ‘without colouring’ to mean ‘with colouring’, garlic always takes better a bit crunchy.
5. Add the rice and turn up the heat. Oh year baby, turn up the heat!
6. The rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. It’s at this stage you can leave it for a bit and start looking for the other ingredients. When it starts to stick, just scrape the bottom harder.
7. Add the vermouth or wine and keep stirring — it will smell fantastic. Any alcohol content will evaporate. Lament this sad fact by pouring yourself a glass.
8. Remember how much constant attention and stirring that risotto takes and start to think that Thai take out might have been a better option.
9. Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. Turn up the heat shortly after when you decide that this whole risotto thing is taking too long.
10. Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. Or just keep adding the stock to speed things up.
    

    Buy the cheapest you can find.

11. Decide that Sir Jamie might have got his ratio’s a bit wrong and add more rice.
12. Then add more stock.
13. Oh shit. Then add more rice.
14. Remove from the heat and add the butter and Parmesan. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes. Or for 10 minutes if you are still finishing your wine.
15. Serve your wonderful Risotto just how Sir Jamie imagined: Stodgy as hell with a glue like consistency but also with bits of uncooked rice, the perfect size for your baby to choke on.