A byootaful Life

I was craving something fancy for dinner tonight and decided that Iowa Girl Eat’s yummy looking shrimp and asparagus risotto would be perfect. While I had originally dismissed the recipe as too fancy and far too hard, I realised as I was reading the ingredient list that, for once in my life, I actually had everything I needed to make it (except for the asparagus but that’s okay because I had frozen peas and they’re close enough!) so I decided to give it a shot. What the heck, if it failed miserably there’s always emergency pizza in the freezer haha. I scaled the recipe down a little by only using 1/2 cup arborio rice as I was aiming for one meal, but it turns out it’s very filling and I ended up with plenty of left overs for dinner tomorrow. The photo below shows the actual serving size that the entire recipe made (using 1/2 cup rice) and as you can see, it’s a good meal for a hungry person, or a meal plus leftovers for a lighter eater.

Apologies for the quality of the photo… let’s just say that, after half an hour of standing at the stove stirring, I was really really hungry and decided to snap a quick iPhone pic instead of hunting around for my camera, but next time I’ll make the extra effort because the above photo just doesn’t do this bowl of deliciousness justice. It’s not the sexiest looking risotto since I took it off the stove a little too early before the liquid had finished being absorbed and the peas should have gone in much later in order to retain their beautiful green colour, but after I added some parmesan cheese and let it stand for a few minutes, it looked a lot more enticing and “together” so I’m counting this one a success!

And wow, the flavours! The parmesan with the stock and the wine just tastes sooooo good! It is time consuming though so it’s definitely not something I would make every night but I’d like to give it another go to try to get it a bit more perfected. Next time I’m going to do a mushroom risotto mmmmm…. Want the recipe? Click here for the printable version.