What Goes With Mushroom Risotto? How About Crab?

My husband Zeke picked Rei up from school on Friday and when they got home, I grabbed a few cookbooks to see what jumped out at me.

I flipped through Cook with Jamie, a cookbook we’ve had for about 10 years (based on the note from my sister to Zeke inside the book). We have a few favorites from this one but haven’t tried anything new in a while.

I found a wild mushroom risotto that sounded good (Rei agreed) but was stumped by what to go with it. I did some internet searches to see what others paired with it and decided on veal and sautéed green beans.

Rei and I zipped to the grocery store with ingredient list in hand and when we got to the meat counter, saw that there was fresh crab and decided that we needed to have our first crab of the season. Crab used to be Rei’s absolute favorite (which Rei’s brother Adam hated) but we didn’t have it very often because of Adam. Boo. Now it’s good, but I’m glad we only have it once in a blue moon because I would get sick of it pretty quickly. It’s a lot of work, cracking open each individual section of shell to access the half-bite of meat inside, only to lose half of it to the butter dish monsters trying desperately to snatch even a morsel of your food from your fork…watch your fork carefully when you dare try for some butter…

Our neighbors brought over some lemons from their backyard tree along with this pup for us to foster. When I say some, I mean 30, so I found a lemon dessert for Rei to make. I love lemons, so I wasn’t mad in the slightest.

We arrived home from the store and Rei got to work on the dessert. It was a lemon pudding cake-like dessert that called for all of one lemon. Fortunately the risotto called for one too. I had never made this recipe (I didn’t see what site it came from either, to see if it was credible or anything. Spoiler alert: yikes.) so it was a bit of a ride. Fun times.

I prepped the green beans to get them blanched before the sauté. I cut off both ends and then cut the beans in half while I brought the pot of water to boil.

Normally we don’t cut them in half but I decided to change it up. They will end up tasting the same; it’s just a different way to present on the plate. It’s all about the aesthetic, am I right?

Rei continued to work on the lemon dessert and ended up having to start over again. The butter wasn’t soft enough. Fortunately we had a few extra lemons. Softened butter is my worst enemy because I am way too impatient to wait for the butter to become all the way soft (who has that kind of time?). I ended up putting the butter in the oven with just the light on, which is what I do to make a warm place for bread dough to rise and stuff like that. It probably would have worked if I let it stay in there a bit longer…

We got some dried mushrooms that needed to be rehydrated so I put them into some water while I cut up an onion and some celery. I had Zeke get some thyme from the garden. It’s looking a little leggy.

Rei decided to put the dessert into ramekins instead of a soufflé dish. We like individual desserts. There’s something special about getting your own little bowl of something rather than a slice of something on a plate. I dunno, it feels fancier or something? (Maybe you just don’t like to share.~Terri)

Once the batter was ready, Rei put it into the ramekins and popped them into the oven (after putting water into the Pyrex dish). Once those were in the over, Rei moved over to help with the risotto. You can probably tell by now from how lumpy the batter is that the desserts won’t turn out quite like we expected… :(

We had chicken stock heating up in the stockpot (I simply rinsed out the green bean pot) and I set up the other pots required by the recipe. This was another multiple pot meal. Ugh!

We got the rice measured out and ready to go with the onions and celery.

I don’t think I’ve made a risotto with an onion AND celery base but I have to say that I really liked it. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

While the celery and onions were cooking (slowly to avoid browning), we prepped the mushrooms. I think we had four different kinds. We’d never worked with oyster mushrooms before but we were limited by what was available at the market. The different types of mushrooms made it interesting. I don’t know very much about mushrooms but these were nice.

We heated up some butter and then added the mushrooms. While the recipe called for four handfuls of mushrooms, we would do more next time. Rei thought the mushrooms should be in smaller pieces but I rather liked the larger bits. These were just a bit too unwieldy, if you ask me. There were some pretty big chunks in there.

Once the celery and onions were cooked, it was time to add the rice and some white vermouth and let the alcohol cook off. This ended up being a brilliant technique because it added sweetness to the dish without tasting like alcohol.

Then it was the typical risotto thing…adding stock one ladleful at a time, allowing the liquid to absorb before adding the next ladle. Once complete, Jamie Oliver considers the base complete and has a variations to finish the risotto. The instructions have you put the rice into an oiled pan to cool off. Since we were using right away, I left it in the pan and picked up on the next steps. Since I’d already oiled the pan, we used it for the green beans.

We added half the stock to the risotto base along with the mushrooms to the risotto base while we heated up more stock in the stockpot. Rei took over at this point and added in the stock ladleful by ladleful once again. Mom keeps complaining about how this dish (and other risottos in general) is so much work and all that, but I didn’t think it was that bad. To be fair, I was floating around the kitchen doing goodness knows what else, but from what I saw and did, it wasn’t too terrible.

Rei grated the Parmesan while I took over the stirring of the rice. While we were at the market, the butcher cracked the crab so all we had to do was put it into a bowl while everything was cooking.

We kept testing the risotto and the rice was al dente, too much so. We added more stock and then covered to see if it would absorb enough to be edible. We got close enough, added the Parmesan and some butter along with the chopped parsley and lemon juice.

At this point I realized I hadn’t put the thyme or garlic into the mushrooms so I added the thyme to the risotto (tasted great) and the garlic to the green beans that we’d been sautéing. I wouldn’t go out of my way to add garlic to the green beans, but they weren’t terrible either.

The garlic worked well with the shallots and the green beans were the perfect accompaniment to what appears to be an odd meal.

We’d melted butter for the crab and each of us had our own dipping ramekin.

I felt like Bugsy at the end of this meal. There was a lot of prep and it was really tasty. Zeke did the dishes while I took pics of this little guy before he left for his fur-ever home the following day. Aww…I’m gonna miss the little bugger.

As for dessert, I had mine for breakfast. It was not a winner. It didn’t fully set and was somewhat liquid-y. We won’t be making this again.

Rei, I know you are having fun with math and would love an excuse to step away from the books. Penny for your thoughts?

Actually, I was doing chem and it was super duper fun. The most fun. The most fun I’ve ever had, in fact (can you tell I’m not a science person?). (Rei, you do realize that cooking and baking are science right?~Terri)

The desserts were extremely weird-textured and didn’t set all the way (they were weirdly grainy and not pleasant). The taste was fine but didn’t make up for the texture. 2/10.

Everything else was pretty good. The beans could do with or without the garlic (nicely cooked, though — Mom and I have differing opinions on how much green beans should be cooked: I like my beans with a bit of crunch left, while Mom prefers to eat mush). The crab was nice, and pretty nostalgic (I don’t remember the last time I ate crab), and the risotto was good.

Altogether, not a bad meal. 7/10 would cook again but not for a super special guest or anything.

Until next time, ciao, and have a a’lsdkigha’ehralf day!

Rei and Terri