The boyfriends mentioned to me that they quite like rice dishes and being Italian, I almost always cook pasta instead! Hell, if it worked, I would have curry with pasta!
I decided to make this dish which would be based on something my mum would cook, creamy mushroom and ham, but she would do it with … guess what? … Pasta!
Ingredients
Onions – 2 large
Garlic – 2-3 cloves (or one if you’re not Italian)
Bacon Lardons (at least 200g) or you can substitute some chopped up gammon (I tend to find cooking bacon is too salty for this, but normal bacon should do)
Mushroom (at least 200g)
Rice (preferably risotto or paella rice)
Chicken stock or stock cubes
Cream 150-200ml
Cooking
Firstly fry the lardons until slightly crispy. You might want to put these aside for now to avoid them being over done.
Fry the onions chopped finely and garlic crushed. You might want to add a little oil, but frying in the pan which had the bacon will allow the bacon grease to flavour the mushrooms.
Add the mushrooms chopped into at least quarters.
At a point of your choosing you can return the lardons and add cream allowing it to absorb the mushroom and bacon flavour. Once the cream is added make sure this is turned to a low heat, you don’t want to boil the cream.
In a separate pan add a cup of rice or if you have big pans you can do a cup and a half. Whichever you do, you want to add double the amount of chicken stock (2-3). If you are using stock cubes, make a cup of chicken stock by pouring boiling water over a chicken cube and dissolving the cub before putting it in with the rice. I made 2 cups of chicken stock and for the third cup I just used hot water.
Boil the rice until it’s almost dry and add the rice to the creamy mushroom sauce with lardons. Mix and serve right away. If it’s left to cool and needs to be reheated I recommend adding a dash more cream.