Chicken risotto with italian cacciatore sausage and sage

I woke this morning feeling less than ordinary and well and truly in need of more sleep, thanks to having to get up 3 times during the night, I felt ill so I ended up having a day at home, rugged up on the couch in front of the TV. I wonder if anyone has had the misfortune of having to sit and watch free to air TV all day on a Thursday, man o man if you have I pity you and I hope you stay at Graylands was not too long!
I got around this boredom by whacking in my favourite DVD and watching Maeve O’Meara’s Italian Food Safari, for the third time! And even though I really didn’t want to eat, it had my salvia glands working overtime. I was feeling pretty ordinary by day’s end though and ended up ringing my Mum for some sympathy, she gave me an age old cure and told me to drink a glass full of half port, half brandy and I must say after my third one I was feeling a lot better, thanks Mum.

Anyway, back to Maeve, one of the episodes had this big brute of a bloke, who looked and sounded more Russian than Italian, cooking a risotto dish.  Apparently he is a guru at cooking risotto so I paid close attention to him again and decided that I must put this knowledge to work, so I set about fixing some risotto for my gorgeous wife's dinner, whom I am sure would have looked after me a lot better had she not been so busy working!
The guy on the video cooked a sausage, red wine and pea risotto and whilst it looked good, I decided to cook with what I had at hand, and what I had was cacciatore sausage, to his pork, totally different, I also wanted to use the chicken breast which had been taken from the freezer earlier in the day. I did use some of his technique though, the most important one being not to stir the rice as it cooked, but rather to shake the pan and to heat the stock to a little higher than a slow simmer, the result was a very tasty dish, the sauce was smooth and creamy and the rice cooked beautifully with nice plump grains.
All the risotto’s I had cooked before tonight have been used to make arancini, and as such I had made the risotto sauce thicker which is ideal for arancini, so it was great to sit down and eat risotto for a meal on its own, something we will do more of in the future. If you would like to know how I went about cooking it check my recipes section, I will post it soon, otherwise check out the brutes method, see lnk below,
cheers Jack

Jack's Chicken Risotto with Italian Cacciatore and Sage

Link to Maeve O'Meara's Italian Food Safari Risotto segment  http://www.sbs.com.au/food/foodsafarirecipe/index/id/9787/n/Risotto_with_sausage_red_wine_and_peas