Prawn risotto with green peas and red cabbage

I have cooked and blogged risotto here a few times now and I am about to do it again, after finding this recipe on Gourmet Traveller, and I do not hesitate to say it is the yummiest, creamiest risotto I have ever eaten.

Funnily enough though it came close to not making it onto tonight’s menu, as when I walked into the fish mongers to buy the prawns and found them at $50.00 per kilo, I was ready to walk away and find a good piece of steak to cook.  It was about then that Jo piped up alongside me to say that she was worth it, with a cheeky smile on her dial, so I relented, and I am so glad I did as they were the freshest, plumpest, yummiest prawns I have ever had the pleasure of eating!

The recipe as written, called for a kilo of the little tackers, but then it did state to serve 6, still at fifty bucks a kg a shiver went up my spine!  I did some quick arithmetic and figured a half kilo would be plenty, then on seeing what a half kilo of Exmouth King Prawns looks like, quickly took another 100 grams out of the bag and adjusted the rest of the recipe accordingly.

Having a parcel of prawns in the bag we went to shop for a few other ingredients and as it is in Perth, it is often the case you have to substitute an ingredient, tonight it was red cabbage substituted for Radicchio.  I did find a prepacked bag labelled radicchio salad, it had 3 pieces of radicchio in it, good one!  It is still on the shelf, unless someone that likes the sound of radicchio, but hasn’t a clue what radicchio is found it, I truly hope he enjoys his mixed leaf salad!

This method for cooking this risotto is very similar to the way I cook risotto, with the exception that the wine goes in and is reduced before the rice goes in.  I tried it this way and was good, but then I had also sealed the prawns in the oil and butter for 2 minutes, before the onion and garlic went in, and I think this helped flavour the dish beautifully.  I was advised by an Italian chap a few weeks ago, to always seal fish and seafood as you would meat, before adding to dishes such as this, I think this is a winner of an idea too, made sense when he told me, made sense when we ate the finished product, never had prawns quite like them before.
One other thing I do not do when cooking risotto, is to stir it, once the first ladle of stock goes in I put the spoon away and just shake the pan, vigorously and often, the result is lovely plump grains of rice packed full of flavour, stirring the rice knocks all of that out of the grains!

The link for the recipe to serve 6 is above, to serve 2 with enough left over for 1 lunch, I used

1 lt stock

70 g butter

50 ml oil

100 ml wine

250 g arioba rice

450 g gren prawns

120 g peas (used frozen)

¼ red cabbage, if you cannot find radicchio

Follow the method as per recipe, but do as Bond would, shake don’t stir!