mushroom risotto

I made this yesterday, my first attempt. we loved the risotto that we had in Turin, Italy on our year end holiday 2 years ago and I've been wanting to try making it ever since but I never got round to look for the most important ingredient - dried porcini mushrooms.

yesterday morning I was in Tesco and the dried mushroom packets were right infront of my eyes, googled recipe and bought risotto rice and sparkling white grape juice (to substitute white wine). I used the recipe from Hairy Bikers' Family cookbook, which is not much different to the recipe from bbcgoodfood  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2364/mushroom-risotto

the most important ingredient in any risotto recipes are  the dried porcini mushrooms and of course the risotto rice. if you cant find the porcini mushrooms, you can skip that and use any other kind of mushrooms but not the dried Chinese mushrooms - they are a bit strong. you can also use fresh white/chestnut (brown)/oyster mushrooms instead. and most recipes use white wine and of course, I substituted that with sparkling white grape juice. it has to be sparkling, not still because the wine/juice will have to evaporate when poured into the rice. 

and you can also make chicken or seafood risotto.

now that I have made the risotto (Italian rice dish), next on my list would be paella - the Spanish rice dish.