hot-smoked trout, pea and lemon risotto

It's funny how quickly time goes. A tasting one night, and going out and getting very drunk the following and before you know it, it's Saturday and not only have you got to drag your hungover self shopping, you've got to go via the swimming pool with an extremely loud five year-old. Parenting, don't do it.

Having spent months looking for it, the October 2011 edition of Delicious containing Dhruv Baker's mythical stew is firmly nailed to the shelf, and the latent project manager in me decides to halve the man-hours spent searching by cudgeling another dish out of it. Luckily the weather difference between October and March seems fairly minimal at this point of the year, but with one eye on the slim chance of us actually having a summer this year, we decide to give this healthy-looking risotto a spin.

I have to say I'm a fairly late convert to risottos. For some reason every time I tried to make them in our early Putney years, I never managed to get the rice properly cooked despite ending up with tennis elbow. In the last couple of years I've nailed them, and now I love the whole zen-like process of stirring, and the rich, creamy feast you end up with.

This one is a doozy, with the smokey fish and sweet peas contrasting beautifully with the creamy rice; Serve with a chilled Chablis and it's got Yummington Mummington stamped all over it!

sources
hot-smoked trout, pea and lemon risotto - Delicious, October 2011, p139