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Mushroom & Bacon Risotto with a Poached Egg
A breakfast for dinner kind of dish!
- Serves: 4 |
- Difficulty: easy
- Prep Time : 10 mins |
- Cook Time : 60 mins
Ingredients
Risotto
5 C (1,25 liters) chicken stock
2 Tbsp olive oil
½ onion finely chopped
300 g Arborio rice
2/5 C (100 ml) white wine
60 g butter
150 g Parmesan cheese or Granda pandano, grated
200 g mixed wild mushrooms from your local market (the market folk take pride in the mushrooms they pick in our local woods)
4 sprigs of thyme
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
250 g Twelve Pigs oak smoked bacon, cut into 3cm pieces
1 lemon, a squeeze or red wine, to deglaze
Salt and freshly ground, black pepper
Poached eggs
4 large free-range eggs from your local market
1 Tbsp white vinegar
Method
Risotto:
Warm up the stock. Cook the onions low and slow until sweet and soft. Turn up the heat to medium and add the rice and toast for about 3 minutes. Add the white wine and cook the alcohol off. (Here is a trick my chef showed me to check if the alcohol is cooked off take a big whiff and if it makes your nasal cavities burn you still need to cook it off – thinking of it now, it must have been hilarious for him to see the facial expressions of each newbie in his kitchen!)
Add the first part of the stock – now this is where the magic happens, but only if you stir and don’t stop, you have to agitate the starch in the rice to get the creaminess.
Adding in the stock gradually and stir continuously – it will take about 25 minutes for the rice to cook al dente. When the rice is cooked, remove from the heat and allow to rest for 1 minute.
Cube half of the butter and add it to the risotto with the parmesan cheese and stir vigorously until you have a nice creamy consistency. Season with salt.
Heat some olive oil and butter in a large saucepan until smoking hot. Add the denser mushrooms first and then the smaller, frailer mushrooms together with the thyme and the garlic. Cook until golden brown and when the mushrooms are done, deglaze with a squeeze of lemon (if you want to be fancy, lose the lemon and deglaze with red wine) and season with salt and pepper.
Cook the bacon until crispy in a frying pan or in the oven.
Poached eggs
Bring a medium saucepan to a simmer and add the vinegar. Crack the egg into a ramekin. Stir the water as though you were stirring coffee and add the egg while the water is still whirling and cook for about 3-4 minutes. Remove the egg with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.
Now for the constructing part – use those food channel skills! Place the risotto into a large, flat bowl, place the mushrooms and bacon on top and to finish your master piece, place the poached egg on top and make a little incision so that the yolk can run down. Garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme.
Picture perfect.
