Leek Risotto with Bacon Crisp

I find leeks are difficult to cook when you get them week on week. It's fair enough to say that you can substitute leeks, chives, spring onions, and onions for each other in a dish, but much like my courgette problem, I can tell when I've used leeks in place of onions in a dish. They taste a bit more green than regular onions, a bit like cucumber I guess, or the green part of the spring onion.  So for me, that flavour needs to be enhanced in its own right.

I've accompanied leek and bacon before in my Leek and Bacon Pasta, so I wanted to do something a bit different to that. I had left over chicken stock as well from earlier on in the week so I went for leek risotto with bacon crisp. To be honest, I've make leek risotto on it's own before and it tastes absolutely delicious, so it really doesn't need the bacon as well. So you're welcome to turn this into a vegetarian dish if you don't eat meat. Choose a rich vegetable stock, add some umami paste if you have some, or water from soaked porcini mushrooms to give it added depth.

The reason why I went for the bacon crisp is because 1) I like bacon and 2) I wanted to give the dish an added texture. I find that risotto's can be a bit boring on their own sometimes because of textural problems. When I made this dish without the bacon before, I chopped up some raw leeks to add to the top to intensify the flavour and give the crunch I was looking for.

I also had some white wine from Uzbekistan that was a gift. It was a bit on the sweet side but I think it worked really well in this dish, with a bit of dried mint to freshen everything up. Otherwise a more fruity wine would work as well.

Ingredients
2 Bacon rashers, chopped finely
1 small Onion, diced
2 Leeks, diced
1/2 cup of grated Parmasean
pinch of dried Mint
half a glass of White Wine
chicken Stock
knob of Butter
1/2 cup of Arborio risotto Rice


Recipe
To make the bacon crisp, fry the bacon in a small frying pan on medium heat without any oil. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking to the pan to toss. Cook until they are starting to char around the edges and have shrunk to half their original size.

Heat stock in a separate pan. Heat cooking oil in pan and add onion and leeks, cook on a low/medium heat until soft. Add wine and simmer until reduced by half.

Add rice and stir until coated with the vegetables. Start adding stock to the risotto, one ladle-full at a time, stirring after each addition of liquid. Leave for about 3 minutes or until the rice has started to absorb all the liquid, then add another ladle-full. The more you stir, the creamier your risotto will be as it releases the starch.

Keep adding liquid until the risotto is al dente.  Add your mint with the last ladle, and just before the risotto is fully cooked, add the parmasean and butter. Mix well.

Assemble risotto onto plate, grate a bit more parmasean over the top and sprinkle the bacon crisp over the top.