Prawn, leek and mushroom risotto

Serves 4/5

~15 jumbo king prawns, raw, shell on, frozen is fine
150g mushrooms
2 leeks
2 small onions
Butter
Vegetable oil
300g risotto rice
handful cherry tomatoes
Parsley

Defrost the prawns according to packet instructions if frozen.  Placing them in a large volume of room temperature water for 1 hour seems preferable to leaving them overnight in a fridge to me, as they will essentially be fresher using the former method.

Take the heads and shells off all the prawns but reserve all.Place the heads and shells in a large bowl.  Cover with water.  Use your finger to remove the orange bits from each head into the water, then place in a colander.  Also clean and remove the shells.  Wash all again afterwards.  Place in a saucepan, cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil, skim off scum, simmer 5-10 minutes then drain through a seive into another bowl.  Then pour into a saucepan leaving behind any grainy residues.  This is the stock with which to make the risotto.


With a small knife, cut down the back of each prawn the whole way and remove the intestine (and discard).  Again wash the prawn meat thoroughly after this.

I won't carp on about how to make the risotto, as I don't really know that well myself.  One good tip I do think is to chop the onions very finely - ie. once chopped in the normal way then 'pass the knife' through them again on a board.  This will help them melt into the risotto.  Also don't stir the risotto too regularly as it destroys the heat and will make things take too long.  Do stir well when you do stir though.

So essentially you make the risotto in the normal way, pan fry the leeks and mushrooms while you are doing this and add towards the end.  Likewise the cherry tomatoes and prawns very close to the end, as the key to a juicy prawn is to not over cook it.  Absolute last thing, after having rested it but before serving, would be to stir in the finely chopped parsley.

The approach is actually quite similar to a recipe I have seen where you have some risotto floating in the middle of a soup plate and a lovely shellfish broth around it, ideally including mussels.