Delicious Dinner: Duck and leek risotto

Tonight we're having a delicious duck and leek risotto. Sounds complicated, right? Nope!

This delicious risotto is so simple and can easily be substituted with chicken, mushrooms, pretty much any vegetable if you happen to be the non-meat-eating kind.

You're going to need:
vegetable oil (enough to season a pan, about 2 tablespoons.
1 medium sized leek
garlic to taste, approx 1 teaspoon
1 chicken stock cube or 1teaspoon of stock powder
2 small breast fillets of duck, pre-cooked and shredded, with the fat removed.
approx. 2 cups arborio rice (i'm feeding myself and 2 boys, 7years and 2 years old. You might like to add more rice to bulk it out and get more out of your meal)
salt and pepper to taste
a great big handful of cheese
a litre or so of boiled water
OPTIONAL: a good swig (about 100ml) of pear cider

Right, let's get to it!


First, we're going to need a cutting board, a large cooks/chopping knife, a big saucepan (the biggest one you have - it's always easier to clean a really big pot that was half full than it is to clean 2 pots and your stove because the food got too big for the pot) and a wooden spoon.
Slice the leek finely, and pop it into the saucepan over medium heat with about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and a teaspoon of crushed garlic (one clove, if you're crushing it fresh, but since i'm all about the laziness, mine comes from a jar). While you're stirring that and letting it blacken ( yes...don't burn it to a crisp, but we want some of that crispy "fried onion" texture and taste to it) boil the kettle and get a jug ready with the stock cube/powder in it. Once the kettle boils, fill up the jug and use the spoon you're mixing your risotto with to stir the stock (rule number one is use as little dishes as possible!).
Once the leek is partially blackened, pop in the duck, which has previously been cooked thoroughly, had the fat layer removed and been shredded. Don't worry too much about getting completely uniform sized pieces or chopping it up so that it's pretty. The idea of this dish is that it's really rustic and full of flavour. Woolworths currently have pre-cooked duck breast in their meat section, which only takes 10 minutes in the oven to heat up (which will make it easier to peel off the fat layer)and it's quite reasonably priced. Stir the duck through the leeks and get the garlic-y, onion-y flavour happening through the meat. If you're using chicken instead, throw in a tablespoon of dried, chopped oregano.
By this point, i'm usually thinking about the kind of beverage i'd like to have with my dinner. On occasion, I really splash out and switch my usual glass of orange juice or lemonade for a bottle of pear cider, and when i'm making this dish, it comes in exceptionally handy. If the fancy takes you, splash a good swig of pear cider or white wine into the pot to "deglaze" the pot. That is, use the liquid to pull all the stuck bits and burned bits off the bottom of the pot to incorporate all of the flavour into the meal. Don't worry about the alcohol content, as the heat and the length of time in which we're cooking this is going to burn off the alcohol and just leave us with that beautiful pear cider taste.
Once you've given the pot a bit of a scrub with the spoon and pulled all the tasty bits up off the bottom of the pan, it's time to whack in the rice. Arborio rice is the perfect risotto rice, as it absorbs so much more moisture and really becomes a fat, stocky rice, full of flavour. As soon as you get the rice into the pot and mix it through the leek and duck mixture, you need to get some stock in there for the rice to start cooking. Start with about half a litre, stirring occasionally so that it doesn't stick to the pot. In between stirs, wash your chopping things and get out some bowls.
Continue adding the stock, a couple of hundred ml at a time until the rice has taken it up and is fat and soft. You want to have it still sticky, a little bit wet, not completely dried out. You might need more than a litre if you use more rice, but that's no big deal. You don't have to make more stock, and can just add water.
Once the rice is cooked through (the best way to check is to taste it - please don't put the wooden spoon in your mouth, then back into the pot, though. You risk contaminating your entire family with any little bug you might have. This is one situation where it's ok to break rule number one and get a clean teaspoon to taste the rice with. NO DOUBLE DIPPING!) grab a big handful of cheese. I like to just use tasty cheese, because my kids like the strong flavour and aren't all that keen on parmesan, but you could use cheddar, tasty, parmesan, any strong flavoured hard cheese. Throw that handful of cheese into the pot and stir it up until it's all melted through. You can take the pan off the heat for this part, because risotto is ALWAYS way too hot to eat immediately and we can start to let it cool down while we season it. Once the cheese is melted in, let's season the risotto with salt and pepper to taste, and spoon it into the bowls you set out earlier.
You can garnish it with some shaved parmesan, a few finely sliced spring onions or even some finely chopped parsley, but my kids don't really care about that kind of thing, so we usually save the garnishes for when we have company.

SERVE!

ENJOY!

That's it. It takes about 20 minutes to make and is absolutely delicious, but don't take my word for it:
Josh (7yo) gives it 4 stars out of 5.
"I love my mum's risotto with the duck. It's cheesy and yummy and makes me very full'.

There you have it. You could serve it with some vegetables on the side, or incorporate some vegetables into the risotto to balance it out a bit, nutrition-wise. I usually serve vegetables with every meal, so when I do meals like this every once in a while, I don't worry about it. My boys are the kind of kids who just love to eat fruit and vegetables. Josh is 7 and one of his favourite foods is brussels sprouts. Max is almost 2 and LOVES cauliflower. With risotto, the boys love to have homemade garlic bread, which i'll cover another day.

I hope you enjoy this risotto. Tell me in the comments if you tried it!