Mysterious Risotto

It was a fun and busy Easter weekend here. We colored eggs, hunted eggs, and ate eggs. We went to church, brunch and had friends over for a holiday barbecue. On top of all of that, Casey was packing and making her final plans for her long anticipated trip to Spain! : ) 

So for Make It Happen Monday this week, we decided to keep it simple. We tried a dish we had never made before: Risotto! 

After looking at different Risotto recipes we decided to try a Mediterranean Risotto.

The recipe we used is here.

After a quick trip to Trader Joe's, we started to gather all of the ingredients.

The rice you use for Risotto is called Arborio. It's an Italian short grained rice. It looked different than the rice we usually see at our house, and we see a LOT of rice. The rice eaters here are Cal rose rice fans!

Here I am using Casey's favorite kitchen tool the chopper! It really is great for onions. But now I am wondering why I was using her favorite tool? hmm.

First step. Sauteing the onions and garlic.

This was a really easy recipe. 

Once the rice was in the pan, we added the water in half cup intervals. We let the rice soak up the water before we added more.

While the rice was cooking we got to work chopping up fresh parsley and some Kalamata olives. 

The only problem we had with this very simple recipe, was judging how long the rice should cook. Once all the water was added and had soaked in to the rice, we weren't really sure how much longer to cook it. We may have been a little premature in taking it off the stove. We just weren't sure.... and we both have a little problem with patience. : )

Anyway, we then added some Feta cheese, Parmesan cheese, the olives and fresh parsley. You can check the recipe here to see the exact amounts ; )

Our finished Mediterranean Risotto

So on this Make It Happen Monday, we conquered the mysterious risotto. 

To be honest, I sort of thought (OK I did think) risotto was a pasta, not a rice. That is how much we learned tonight! It was great to make a dish that we had always enjoyed, but didn't know much about. Next time we will be more patient with the rice. But this simple recipe turned out so rich and creamy. We also loved the mediterranean flavors.