Experimental Seafood Risotto

The original recipe was for a roasted pumpkin and spinach risotto from Superfood Ideas. I tweaked it so that I could have a tomato based seafood risotto. The measurements have not been perfected yet, so please take these measurements as a rough guide until I ascertain accurate amounts.

This recipe will serve between 4-6 people.

Ingredients:

Seafood mixture:

3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed or minced.
dried herbs (I used oregano and thyme)
300-400g fish fillets, chunky slices (approx 2cm thick)
desired amount of other seafood items
*eg: prawns, shelled but with tail still on
crabsticks, sliced

Others:

1 leek, sliced thinly
1 can (approx 400g) whole peeled tomatos
1 and a 1/2 tablespoons powdered vegetable stock
1 and a 1/2 cups arborio rice
50g mushrooms, sliced
100g baby spinach or spinach with most of the stems removed
20g butter
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Method:

1. Place the seafood in a bowl and mix in crushed garlic and dried herbs. Season with a little pepper and set aside.
   
2. Open the can of whole tomatos and use a knife to break up the whole pieces in the can.
3. Pour the contents into a measuring cup and top up with water. Make sure you end up with approximately 7 cups of water. Transfer into a pot and add the vegetable stock.
4. Bring the tomato based liquid to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
5. In another pan (B), add some olive oil and fry the leeks until softened.
6. Add the arborio rice to (B) and stir until the rice grains are mostly translucent.
   
7. Pour in a ladleful of stock and stir on medium heat until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. Repeat with remaining stock until rice is mostly tender, but still firm to the bite.
   
8. Stir in mushroom, spinach and seafood mix. Cover and set aside until the spinach is wilted and the seasfood is cook.
   
9. Stir in butter and parmesan cheese. Serve.

Tips:

It is important to stir as the liquid tends to stay at the top, thus the rice will get burnt and will stick to the pan.

Reserve your largest pot for the risotto - you need as much space as possible in order to effectively stir in all the ingredients.

Try experimenting with other veggies. Note that some veggies may need to be put in earlier. Leafy vegetables like spinach will cook quickly, whereas you might want to give capsicum a longer time to cook through.

For my first trial run, I used Basa fillets and I achieved fantastic results - the fish was very soft and took on some of the flavours of the risotto. You might want to consider a fish with a mild, if any, flavour as it goes better with the tomato based stock. If you want to use salmon, I'd suggest using a non tomato based stock.