White Wine Barley Risotto with Fennel OR Shall I or Shallot Not?

Whenever I watch Chopped or Iron Chef America on the Food Network, I often see chefs trying to pull together a risotto. They think this will impress the judges because in their minds, to pull off a great risotto under the imposed time restraints is akin to delivering twins in the back seat of a Manhattan taxi cab. And true enough, if the chef does pull it off, the judges usually comment on the degree of difficulty in creating said dish.

I'm going the other direction with this batch--this is slow cooked risotto. One of the requirements and challenges to cooking a great risotto is the constant stirring. Normally risotto is takes 20-25 minutes. My version will take about 4 hours and there's nearly no stirring involved.

Alcohol Element

This dish calls for white wine. When substituting for white wine, you have a number of options: you can use the old stand by of chick broth or stock, but since we're already using that in the dish, you may opt for ginger ale, white wine vinegar, or if you want to get really crazy, white grape juice diluted with white wine vinegar. I tend to like the zip vinegar adds so I went with white wine vinegar.

Risotto

Just so there's no confusion, let me first define risotto: rice cooked in meat stock and seasoned in any of various ways (as with butter and cheese or with wine and saffron). My riff on risotto is I'm cooking barely instead of rice (for a more robust and earthier flavor--plus you can't be barely for rich dietary fiber) and using white wine vinegar instead of white wine. Normally I would go with a predetermined white cooking wine, but this is Elder in the Kitchen after all.

Ingredients

2 teaspoons            fennel seeds
1                             large or 2 small fennel bulbs
                               (cored and finely diced, plus 2 tablespoons chopped fronds)
1 cup                      pearl barley (or short-grain brown rice)
1                             small carrot (finely chopped)
1                             large shallot (finely chopped)
2 cloves                  garlic (minced)
4 cups                     reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 1/8 cups              water (divided)
1/3 cup                   white wine vinegar
2 cups                    frozen French-cut green beans
1/2 cup                  grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup                  pitted oi-cured black olives (coarsely chopped)
1 tablespoon          freshly grated lemon zest
                              Freshly ground pepper (to taste)

Let's take a moment to recognize the shallot:

Look for them nestled in between the garlic cloves and the onions.
Looks like the former, flavor like the latter.

For some reason, when you say shallot, an image of a small white onion with green shafts comes to mind. These are not shallots. A shallot is cloved like garlic, but bigger--kind of like comparing a golf ball to baseball, and it's purple. The flavor is all onion though. It only took about ten seconds for this baby to bring tears to my eyes.

Directions Part I

1) Use cooking spray to coat a slow cooker (at least 4-quart, there's going to be a fair bit of liquid in this).

2) To bring out the fennel flavor, crush the fennel seeds. You can use the broad side of a knife or the under side of a sauce pan.

3) Combine the fennel seeds, diced fennel, barley, carrot, shallot, and garlic in the slow cooker.

4) Introduce the white wine vinegar, 1 cup of water, and broth, stirring it all to a lovely heterogeneous melange.

5) Cover and cook until the barley is tender, but chewy, and the risotto itself has a thick creamy consistency. For my slow cooker this took a little over 4 hours on high.

Because you want Aaron Sanchez to look on your baby delivery skills with admiration.

I spent 30 minutes getting the dish to this point.


Directions Part II

1) When the risotto is done, but prior to serving, cook the green beans per the package directions and drain.

2) Turn off the slow cooker and stir in the green beans. Also mix in the olives, lemon zest, Parmesan, and pepper.

3) If the risotto has begun to dry out, heat up the remaining 1/2 cup of water and stir it in as well.

4) We know the judges are always grading on presentation, so be sure to serve your risotto with a sprinkle of chopped fennel fronds.