Bacon Risotto

This weekend I cooked not once but twice. Believe me this is a big deal. I wanted to cook stuff that I knew Whitney wouldn't like and since she'll be home in two weeks, I figured I better get cracking. She doesn't like rice and Dan and I love risotto, so I thought that would be good to make. We have a recipe that we like but I wanted to experiment. I found a recipe for bacon risotto on allrecipes and thought hey, we like bacon, let's try it.

I have to pat myself on the back and say I made a perfect risotto. Creamy and cooked to perfection. The basic recipe could be adapted to use any kind of vegetables or meat you wanted. The bacon was nice but actually wasn't necessary. The important part is the creamy texture you get in the risotto.

Bacon Risotto (recipe from allrecipes.com)

• 1/2 pound bacon, diced
• 5 cups chicken stock (I used 3 cans + 1/3 cup white wine)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• salt and black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Cook and stir the diced bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until browned, about 10 minutes. Drain the bacon and reserve.
2. Bring the chicken stock to a boil in a saucepan over high heat; reduce heat to low to keep the chicken stock hot.
3. Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic; cook and stir until the onion begins to turn golden brown at the edges, about 2 minutes. Pour in the rice and stir until the rice is coated in butter and has started to toast, 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce heat to medium; stir in one-third of the hot chicken stock and continue stirring until the rice has absorbed the liquid and turned creamy. Repeat this process twice more, stirring constantly. Stirring in the broth should take 15 to 20 minutes in all. When finished, the rice should be tender, yet slightly firm.
4. Remove the risotto from the heat and stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, the Parmesan cheese, and the reserved bacon. Season to taste with salt and pepper before serving.

I made a couple of changes. I added white wine after coating the rice before adding any broth. It also took me about 25 minutes to get to the right consistency. I added salt and white pepper before it finished so that would cook in. Use this as a good base for making risotto and you can't go wrong.

Cinnamon Bacon Carbonara

We love bacon. So of course anytime we can cook with it we jump at the chance. We've made this recipe for many years so we love it. It was on Giada De Laurenitis show on food network. We got so many trAditional Italian dishes from her show that are truly delicious. We of course had to make changes since we really don't have pancetta here in Oklahoma. So this is our revised version. We cut it in half so feel free to double it.

Cinnamon Bacon Carbonara

4 slices bacon, chopped
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 cup whipping cream
3/4 cup grated parmesan
3 large egg yolks
8 ounces fettuccine

Sauté bacon in frying pan over medium heat until almost crisp. Sprinkle cinnamon over bacon and cook until crisp.

Cool bacon. Whisk cream, cheese and egg yolks with the bacon.

Cook you pasta until tender but not done. Add pasta to sauce and cok over medium high heAtuntil sauce becomes thick and sticks to pasta. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This tastes a lot like Alfredo sauce but richer with the egg yolks. The cinnamon adds a really nice flavor sort of like when we add a little bit of nutmeg to our Alfredo sauce. Yummy, yummy, yummy.

You can't go wrong with this recipe. It doesn't take a lot of time to make so it would work on a week night.