A good risotto only needs a few ingredients. Good rice, good oil, good broth and in this case good seafood: prawns, octopussy and mussels. The rest is down to your ability with a wooden spoon. Prior to start, you must make a broth. When doing seafood risotto, it's always handy to have a few fish carcasses in your freezer. In this case sea bass. So in there goes the carcasses, onions, carrots, parsley, bay leaves salt and black pepper in a pot with water and a glass of dry white wine. When the broth has cooked for some time, removes all the bits, then flash cook the prawns for 30sec. the mussels for 1min. and the octopussy pieces for 5min. approx in it. The thing with octopussy is, you cook it either for a short or a long time, but not in between, otherwise you'll end up with rubber in your plate. Reserve the seafood in a sealed tupperware to avoid any dryness. In a cast iron pot, put a few table spoons of olive oil and a piece of butter and let to sweat a finely chopped onion and a garlic clove. Then add some rice and stir for few min. Then the real sport begins. Little by little add the broth while stirring the rice. If you stir it too much, the risotto becomes muddy. Not enough and it'll be watery and not creamy. It's kinda tricky to find the right balance, and it takes some practice. Tbh, I've had my fair share of failures over the years but as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Anyway, when the risotto has almost the right consistency, add a few pieces of fridge cold butter, lemon juice, a bit of chopped parsley, the seafood, and stir gently everything together. Kill the heat, put a lid on, and just let the seafood sucks up the heat without further cooking. A good seafood risotto should be a little runny but not too much, and must be eaten with a spoon.
and so... "Risotto ai Frutti di Mare" with a few glasses of Fontanasanta Manzoni Bianco 2019
