Risotto with Chicken livers and Tomato

I just made this recipe from memory - it was one I remember from childhood that I actually liked. 

I tried to pay attention to the quantities

Risotto with chicken livers and tomato

2 onions

2 shallots (if you have them on hand)

about 1/4 lb chicken livers or chicken hearts and livers

Butter, about 3 tbsp

a cup of canned tomato, crushed or chopped, or 1 tablespoon tomato paste added to the broth/water

wine or dry vermouth (about 1/4 cup)

chicken broth and water, or just water - as much as needed for the particular rice you find

1 lb arborio rice  (if you want to make it use any rice if you can't get arborio - it's fine - just not "converted" rice)

salt and black pepper

Chop the onions and shallots.  Heat the butter in a large heavy frying pan, add the onions and shallots, salt as if they were something in your dish, grind some black pepper over them  and cook slowly in the butter till almost soft. 

Cut up livers in pieces and add, salt them as you would food in your dish, and grind on some more pepper.  Raise heat and start browning, stirring so they don;t burn.  They don;t need to cook through, but a little browning is nice especially what sticks to the pan.  Add more butter if it seems to need more fat to fry them.

Add rice, and stir and cook as it absorbs flavor from the other ingredients, for about 2 or 3 min.  You may need more butter if the bottom looks dry. 

Add the wine and boil down stirring and scraping the brown stuff from the pan. 

Add the tomato if you use it, cook a few minutes over high heat, Salt again, sprinkling evenly, a little less than you would put on a dish of the same amount of stuff. 

Add the broth or broth and water or water a little at a time (if you used tomato paste, add it to the first batch of water) - about a cup at a time, and stir, it should be a little soupy, with the liquid very obviously puddling between the rice - you can also add the liquid to the level of the rice the first time around.  You don;t need to stir constantly, but you should be nearby to give it a vigorous stir frequently and be sure there;s enough liquid.  Keep adding as you cook, so it keeps the puddle of water at least halfway up the rice. 

Taste as you go, and when it seems the rice is almost cooked (don't let it get mushy) you can let some of the liquid cook down and be absorbed, and add only a small amount at a time at this point until the rice is cooked to your taste. 

Serve with grated parmigiano

really hearty and filling (heartier still if you used the hearts - okok, i'll stop)

Thanks Koukouvagia, this is one of the occasions where i actually like something cooked in tomato and it's very filling and hearty.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koukouvagia 

One of these days we need to start a risotto idea thread.  I keep falling back on the old classics, mainly mushroom risotto.  I've had an idea of making a bone marrow risotto for a long time that I haven't tried yet.

 

It still kills me that you live in italy and don't like tomato based food.  Who am I to talk though, I'm a greek who doesn't like feta cheese or lamb, although I've been training myself to like both.

As for the risotto ideas, try it with cauliflower - cut them into very small flowerets, and fry some garlic and onion in olive oil slowly, add the cauliflower then the rice and stir and fry a bit more, then add water (or broth) - it's unusual and really good.   Surprisingly sweet.  Well, not sugary, but not cabbagey.

Also risi e bisi (rice and peas). 
 

As for the tomato, my mother cooked practically everything in tomato - stringbeans, artichokes, chicken, she'd even ruin breaded veal cutlets with tomato sauce (why bother getting that nice crispy breading and then sog it all up with sauce) - i never liked her cooking.  I do like tomato, though, but on pasta.  I love it on pasta.  But few other places. 

What's more irritating though, is that since i like tomato on pasta, i married the one italian man who doesn;t like pasta with tomato!  go figure! 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChefBillyB 

I think I saw something about a Crazy lady in Rome running through Piazza Navona chasing a chicken, we now know where the chicken livers came from..............

That's a typo, if she was chasing it it would be a chicken lover!

I should know, being the crazy lady in rome...

But actually, i've never seen chickens in piazza navona, but they did have them at Piazza Vittorio which had an open-air market, and there was a stand where they sold live chickens.  They also would slaughter them there and pluck them for you with a plucking machine.  This was back in the 1970s when i first came.  Sometimes someone would also take the live chicken away in a bag on the bus occasionally.  No live chickens any more, alas.  But they do still have live snails, in big baskets, and they constantly climb (slither?) out and the lady pushes them back - lucky for them they;re slow. 

I live in San Giovanni - closer to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and in walking distance (about 20 min - half hour) to piazza vittorio emanuele, where the live chickens used to be sold.  That's very close to the train station.  

Do you know rome?

Hi Chris,

I don;t even know what jambalaya is (when i left the states it was not made in the boston area as far as i know and it doesn;t exist here). 

No, it doesn't look much like what you pictured - the tomato is MUCH less, and just colors the rice a little, the main liquid is broth, and it's not saucy, that is, with liquid sauce in the finished rice.  The rice absorbs the liquid almost entirely and the color, if not pink, is more muted (a little brown due to the browned livers).  It's a traditional dish from Barga (Lucca) Italy.  No influence of jambalaya! though there may be resemblances. 

I, actually, am NOT a risotto fan, but i do like that one with the chicken livers.  The only way i REALLY enjoy rice is boiled (like pasta) with just butter on top - and i like long grain and not perfumed rice - or in escarole soup. 

But i make it lots of ways for the family - esp the vegetarian daughter - mainly with vegetables (zucchine, cauliflower, cabbage, mushrooms)  But if it were for me, I would boil the rice and eat the vegetable separately!  . 

Thanks, Chris,

Actually, that isn't so different from how i make it - the only major differences being that mine has the livers cook with the rice and tomato, and I don;t like sweet wines in cooking, particularly marsala.  (oh, also, i don't soak the livers in milk, they never seemed bitter to me).  I like the flavor the livers put into the rice and tomato, so i wouldn't just put it on top as a garnish. 

However, when I do a seafood risotto, I do cook the seafood first with garlic and olive oil in the pan, then remove it and keep it aside till the end.  I sautee more garlic and some hot pepper in the same pan, with the seafood removed, add the rice, let it get coated and cook a little in the oil,  then add some of the fish liquor that has come out of the seafood, boil it down till syrupy, then add the dry white vermouth (I very rarely drink wine, so vermouth keeps well and i use it for cooking - thank you julia child for that suggestion), boil it down and then some tomato (fresh, very ripe).  I add water the same way you suggest, a little at a time, and for the last couple of minutes return the seafood to the pan to cook a little with the rice. 

But anyway, Chris,  it's not that I don;t like risotto because i don't like the way I make it.  If i didn;t like the way it came out when i make it I would not make it that way but try a different way.  I don;t like it because i don;t like creamy rice (sort of loses the point of having risotto, if you don't like creamy rice.)

It's like polenta - I really only enjoy polenta with butter and cheese.  All those birds, sausages, tomato sauces etc, are lost to me. I'll make it for others, but i keep mine simple, butter and parmigiano. 

Pasta, instead, I like in many different ways. 

I never steam rice, i just cook it like pasta, in a lot of boiling water,. then drain it.  So easy. 

Interestingly, Koukouvagia, while i make it that way (cooked with the butter) for others, for myself i actually like the flavor of the raw butter melted into the plain boiled rice.  I taste both, albeit very mild (you would say tasteless, i would say delicate) flavors.  I don't even like parmigiano on it, which distracts from the taste.  But steamed it's stickier and i don't like the texture. 

Hmm, If i want risotto, i don;t boil the rice first.  Spinach isn;t a very interesting flavor, either.  But who knows, with the ricotta, it might be ok. 

I learned to boil rice like this (like pasta, in a lot of water, then drain it) here in italy.  Unless making risotto, no one I've ever seen cooks it till the rice absorbs the water.  In fact at first i had no idea how to cook it because they didn;t have the proportions of water to rice on the rice packages, because everyone boils it in a lot of water. 

I used to do soffritto of onion or garlic or everything for practically every dish, but i find it overpowers some delicate things (spinach and ricotta, for instance) - so try it and see how it is, then let us know.