Risotto with Salmon and Prosciutto

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School field trips used to have allure.


You would file onto a yellow school bus.  One by one.


You would fight over who gets to sit in the back with all of the cool kids.  You would secretly hope that the guy you've had a crush on for the past decade or so would ask you to sit next to him.  You would stare down the girl who he eventually did end up sitting next to.  If only looks could kill.  If. Only.


You would eat your lunch out of a brown paper bag (and didn't that somehow make it taste so much better than when it came out of your hard plastic Barbie lunchbox?  Why did mom spend money on that hard plastic Barbie lunchbox anyway, when a paper bag truly would have sufficed?  Well, that ends that.  My future children are not getting hard plastic lunchboxes.  Even if they have Barbie on them.  ESPECIALLY if they have Barbie on them!)



Well, let me tell you.  When you get to med school, all of that glitz and glam?  Gone.

Instead, you find yourself on a bus in the middle of east Harlem (on which you just saw two people get arrested, mind you) heading to a sewage treatment facility.

I wish I could tell you that I was making this up.  But I couldn't make stuff like this up.  Even with my vivid imagination.



And did I mention that it is ten degrees outside?  Did I mention that you are wearing the puffy hot pink jacket that makes you look like a puffy hot pink cotton ball that you probably haven't worn since your last school field trip.  In the 90's.

This is sounding more and more like a human rights violation, don't you think?



And as I wandered around that sewage treatment facility.  My hair becoming semi-permanently saturated with the smell of dust.  (And trust me, I was profusely thankful that it only smelled like dust.)

All I could think about was this risotto.  And how I got to come home to it.  In all of it's salty creamy carbalicious glory.

It makes even sewage bearable.  Glorious.



Risotto with Bay Scallops Salmon and Prosciutto
Serves 4, adapted from Symon's Live To Cook


2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 oz prosciutto, cut into strips
1 1/2 cup arborio rice
1 generous pinch of saffron
1/2 cup dry white wine
4-6 cups chicken broth, warmed
12 oz wild Alaskan salmon fillets, cut into small chunks
1/4 cup sliced fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp grated parmesan

1. Heat the olive oil in a 4-qt saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and sweat it for 2 minutes.  Add the garlic and sweat it for 2 minutes more.  Add the prosciutto and cook it until it crisps, about 1 minute.  Add the rice and let it toast slightly in the hot fat, about 1 minute, stirring with a wooden spoon.

2. Reduce the heat to low and add the saffron and wine.  Stir continuously until most of the wine has cooked off.  Add 1 cup of the stock and stir continuously until the liquid has cooked off, about 3 minutes.  Add another cup of stock.  Repeat.  Taste.  Continue to add stock in 1/4 cup increments until the rice is tender and the risotto is creamy.

3. Add the salmon and continue to stir for 2 minutes, or until it is cooked through.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the parsley, butter, and cheese.  Serve immediately.

This is my submission to this week's Symon Sundays, hosted by Ashlee over at Veggie By Season!

And remember to send me your entries for Regional Recipes: BRAZIL by December 31st!