Mike van de Elzen: Dried mushroom risotto

Dried mushroom risotto 

Cook time – 60 minutes 

Prep time – 20 minutes 

Serves 6 

3 cups dried mushroom  

1 onion, peeled and diced  

4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed  

2 tbsp vegetable oil  

Flaky sea salt  

2 cups arborio rice  

1/2 cup white wine  

2 cups parmesan, grated  

150 gm butter, cubed  

Black pepper  

Vegetable stock, hot (around 2 litres)  

METHOD 

Place the dried mushrooms into a pot and cover with the vegetable stock, add in the onion and garlic peels. Bring to the boil and turn down to a simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off and allow the mushrooms to soften. Up to a hour would be great.  

Prep the rest of your vegetables.  

Pour your mushroom stock through a sieve and discard the skins and finely slice the mushrooms.  

To make the risotto, heat your oil in a pan and gently saute your onions and garlic until translucent. Once cooked, add in your arborio rice and toast in the pan, stirring continuously. You want a little colour on the rice, without it catching. Once golden, pour in your white wine and mix, allowing the alcohol to simmer off.  

Add your mushroom stock a ladle at a time, stirring occasionally to stop it from sticking. Once all the stock is absorbed add another ladle in. Continue this process until the risotto is cooked al dente. Add in your chopped mushrooms and taste. Once cooked remove from the heat and stir in the parmesan and butter.  

Serve. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Thank you for your texts. You're most welcome to text
us anytime throughout the morning. On ninety two ninety two,
I have one text here saying please pass on to
Nenagil that my father in law can move flap his ears,
which sounds incredibly impressive. It is something go to the
mirror and have a little trial on it. When I
heard that we were talking about this, so I stodn't
run on the mirror and did it for a while

(00:33):
and then realized I was just making very strange faces.
Ears don't move. But then I did realize my ears
weren't even and evenly plunked on my head. So there
we go, the things you learn anyway. Joining us now
is Mike vander Alison, our resident chief.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
How is life at the Black Bull Hilton?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Ah? I haven't we haven't right, I'm still in Nelson.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
We're about to drive over to Black Bull now, so
I can't wait to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh, I'm very jealous because you're going to hit the
paper track on Monday morning.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
That right, Yeah, first thing Monday morning.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
So it's three days, two nights, and dock huts and
we're mountain biking, mountain biking, all of it.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
But part I'm looking forward to is it opened. I
think it's been open about a year now.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
It's and it's called the Pike twenty nine Memorial Track,
so it's about eleven kilometers down to the Pike River
Mine Memorial and then which sounds pretty epic, eleven kilometers
of down mountain biking.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Don't you have to turn around and go back up again.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, that's that's the downside of it.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Oh no, I'm really jealous. I did the Paperro Track
two years ago, I think, and that wasn't open yet.
But look once once you're up on that ridgeline, and
it's a stunning ride.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I hear, I hear. So we're yeah, we're head over.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
We've got all our gears on our bikes, we've got
to take on our food on our sleeping and and
I thought, you know, food wise, So I'm in charge
of food on the first night, so tomorrow night it's
my job, and then another thread takes over the next night.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
So I was like, what am I going to do?

Speaker 4 (02:12):
It needs to be tasty. It needs to be delus
us high expectations. We're bringing a ship on the paper
and I'm like, well, I ain't going to lug up
anything that weighs anything, so it's got to be dry
and it's got to be fulfilling.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
So what have you come up with?

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well?

Speaker 3 (02:27):
I came up with the result.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
What a brilliant jays. I wish you. I wish you
no awesome idea. I had a look. They make some
amazing freeze drive foods now, but it's still when you've
had a few of them, sort of Yeah, you put
your water on, You're going to mix around, and you
kind of oh, here we go. I would have loved you,
wish to take you next time. You could psych oh

(02:49):
my gosh, because we did it in two days. We
walk around it and you could clightly hid and you
could have it already for us when we.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Arrived, and I could pour some champagne. It's all ready
for you, as.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Long as you're carrying that on your bike.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Because that's I can't wait, your darling talk us through
this dried mushroom rosotto.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
So as much in here as dried.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
But obviously I didn't want to take dried butter, and
I didn't want to take dried parts and so a
little bit as wet. So it's called dried mushroom zoto.
So the idea is that you buy dehydrated mushrooms or
dried mushrooms. So first thing to do is, I've got
three cups of mushrooms. The first thing you need to
do is you actually need to soften up those mushrooms.
So take three cups, pop them into a pot pour
over some vegetable stock.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
I've got two leads of vegetable stock that could be water.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
And what I'm doing is I'm just taking some of
that organic vegetable bullion. So make up about two leaders.
Drop your mushrooms in the rectly calls for an onion,
so peel your onion, put your peelings into the stock
with the mushrooms. And it also calls for four points
of garlic, so peel the garlic and put their peelings
into the stock because it's all flavor. Bring that up
to the ball, turn it down, simm it for a

(03:56):
couple of minutes, and then turn it off. And you
want to kind of if you can leave that, leave
those mushrooms sitting in that warm stock for it if
you can an hour, because you want those mushrooms to
really soften up and become tendered. So while that's setting
or sitting, you can prep the rest of the veggie.
So take that onion into small dice, take the garlic,

(04:17):
crush it, peel it, heat up a pan like a
large pan, add in two tapersents of vegetaball.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Start to saute off.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Your onions and add in your garlic, just over a
low heat, and then add and I've got two cups
of a boreo rice that's going to feed the three
of us well and truly, so three cups or two
cups of a boreo rice, saute and that off.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
At this point, this is where everyone goes wrong.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
They go right, well, sautee off the rice and then
we add in the wine straight away. What you want
to do is you actually want to sautee the rice
for a period of time until you start to get
a little bit of a nutty crack on the outside
of the rice, and that holds that grain of the
rice through the whole cooking process of the risotto, and
at the end you don't have a mushy, broken up
piece of rice resotto, so saute that off.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
It just starts to color up.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Then add in half a cup of water, take the
heat out of the pan, and then just start smashing
the vegetable stock. So it's about three part stock to
one part rice, So you know you can start off
heavy and just added maybe three cups of vegetable stock
and then just start to slow the process down. And
what you're looking for at the end is for that
rice grain to be al dente. So you look into
that little rice grain and in the center you're going

(05:22):
to see a little dot of white. That's going to
be the chalkiness. That's going to be what we call
our dentate or firm to the tooth. Once you reach
that stage, pull your rice off, turn the heat off,
and then ice smash. And I've got one hundred and
fifty grands of cube but butter and two cups of
grated palms. And I've actually just brought the grated palms
in the bag because it was the lightest one I
can fight. So add there live a salt liver in

(05:45):
a pepper. Serve it up straight away.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You're going to have a sand. Hey, what's the weather
looking like?

Speaker 4 (05:51):
It's looking good Tuesday afternoon, apparing a little bit of rain.
But yeah, tomorrow's looking stunning. Tomorrow's a hard day because tomorrow's.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
All up there. Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh, look it's going to be amazing. Are you saying
at Punakhaiki at the end? I just think is such
a stunning spot?

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yes we are, and then we come back to now
some fly out tesday.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Oh have an amazing week. Look forward to hearing all
about it next week. Thank you so much, Mike. If
you two are keen for his dried mushroom rosotto, you'll
find that recipe at good from Scratch dot co dot inz,
or you'll be able to find it at NEWSTALKZIB dot
co dot inz. Forward slash Sunday for.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
More from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen live
to News Talks HE'B from nine am Sunday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio