Sun dried tomato and mushroom Risotto

Recently, I have been monkeying around with making some risotto and trying to keep it low calorie.  The most recent experience was today, and the results were pretty good.  Here is a rundown of how it went:

Ingredients:

One cup Arborio rice (now available at most groceries in India, I picked it up at Namdhari’s).

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 to 5 cloves and garlic crushed

10-12 sun dried tomatoes (soak in warm water for 10-15 mins)

A fistful of mushrooms of your choice, the dried kind are also good (soak in warm water for 10-15 mins if dried)

Plenty of water

Salt, pepper and crushed red chillies

¼ to ½ cup of red wine

¼ to ½ cup cheese (parmesan) grated

Method:

Add the olive oil into a broad-based pan heat at medium, add in the garlic.  Sautee the Arborio rice for a minute.  Add water slowly, continuously stirring (this takes long!).  After about five or 7 minutes, add in sun dried tomatoes and mushrooms (if you have soaked the tomatoes and mushrooms in warm water, keep adding this water in slowly also) and cook slowly till the rice is nice and soft, adding in the wine somewhere in between.  Eventually, the mixture should be a nice gooey mixture of rice. Turn off the gas, add in the cheese, salt, pepper and chillies to taste and mix it in.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 60 minutes

Serves: 1 to 2 if there is nothing else, 3 to 4 otherwise

For an unhealthy version, double the cheese, add in about 50 gram to 100 grams of butter and half a cup of cream!