Monday, July 13, 2009

Crab and corn risotto (and how to fix an overseasoned risotto)

Crab and corn are a great combination. Abby and I first had a crab and corn dish at Esca in NYC, and, since then, I've made crab and corn pasta. Since we are moving in a couple weeks, we're in the process of clearing out the freezer, and I had some lobster stock that I didn't want to go to waste, I decided to put it to use as a base for a risotto and figured that the crab corn combo would do well for this dish. Here's the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
-1.5 cups Arborio rice
-2 quarts stock
-1/4-1/2 cup white wine
-2 shallots, minced
-2 cloves garlics, minced
-3 T butter
-1/4-1/2 cup grated Parmessan
-container crab meat (can't remember the size, it's whatever they sell at Whole Foods)
-1 cup sweet corn

Melt 2Tbsp butter over medium heat, cook the shallots and garlic until the shallots become soft and translucent.

Add the rice and stir to coat with butter for about 1 minute. Add the white wine and let reduce. Meanwhile, the stock should be simmering, so it is hot when you add it to the risotto.

Add the stock one ladel full at a time, stirring constantly, until done. When the risotto is all dente, stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter, the cheese, crab, and corn. Add stock to adjust consistency and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Usually stock isn't that salty, but in this case, it was, which proved to be a problem. It's not a bad idea to thin out stock with water just to keep the flavor from overpowering everything else (the flavor gets really concentrated in the rice), and in this case the dish was just too salty. To fix it, I just cooked up another 1/2 cup of arborio rice using water and absolutely no seasoning. I diluted the overly salty risotto with this and the result was pretty good. This should work with any over seasoning problems you should run into with risotto.

2 comments:

Sherilyn -Dominee Huisvrouw said...

Have you thought about applying for Hell's Kitchen? :)

Sam said...

Haven't considered it yet. That would be fun, though. Maybe I'll put that on my to do list after I finish grad school