Simple Mushroom Risotto

At Becca's request, I'm posting this recipe. There are probably a lot of different things you could do with it, like deglazing the pan with white wine, sherry, and adding herbs such as rosemary, sage, or other mushroom-friendly plants. Play around with it as much as you want, but it tastes just fine like this and isn't very difficult. Use whatever your favorite mushrooms are, from portobellas, criminis, oysters, porcinis, plain white, shitakes. I usually use two different kinds to give it depth of flavor but nothing too complex. You do not have to purchase expensive Arborio rice to make risotto, even though Arborio makes the best creamy risotto. Just make sure you get short grain white rice and you will be fine.

Ingredients

-2 cups short grain white rice
-about 8 cups chicken broth, or water with chicken bouillon mixed in
-4 tbs unsalted butter
-2 tbs olive oil
-2 large shallots, diced
-2 cups mushrooms, your choice, chopped fine (make sure the two cups is AFTER they are chopped fine, not before)
-about 1/2 cup large mushroom pieces, halves or quarters, for texture
-salt and pepper, to taste

In a pot as large as necessary, bring to boil all the chicken broth. This is actually quite important.

In a medium to large soup pot, melt your butter in the olive oil and add the shallots, allowing them to turn translucent and brown slightly. Add the mushrooms and salt and pepper everything to layer the flavor.

Once the mushrooms have begun softening, throw in your rice and stir it around for about 1-2 minutes to coat the grains and get them started. This done, add about two ladel-fulls of the boiling chicken broth. (Because the broth was already boiling, it will not reduce the heat of the rice concoction, so the cooking of the rice is never interrupted). Stir the rice frequently until the broth is absorbed. Keep repeating this step until the rice is soft and creamy. If you run out of broth before this happens, just use a little water to finish the job.

Plate a serve with plenty of parmesan cheese.