Wow it’s been over three months since last time I share my recipe on preparing steamed eggwhites, today I’m assigned to prepare another dish as my mom’s not at home for dinner tonight.

This time I would like to cook something I’m easy at – Steaks, with something I really wanted to cook again for a long time – Risotto. I’ve only tried once preparing risottos during my time in Australia, thanks to Jamie Oliver’s iPhone app, it helps to remind myself the basics of risottos and therefore is no problem to me anymore.

Steaks and Risotto.

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Today’s recipe’s divided into 2 parts, the first is being the risotto, and the second’s for the steak. Before anything starts, here’s the shopping list for you:

Serves 4

• 4 pieces of thin-cut sirloin steaks (means 1 piece per-person)
• 1 large onion, diced
• A small portion of Parmesan cheese (no need to be too much)
• 2 cubes of butter (salted or not whatever)
• 2 cloves of celery, diced
• 1 box of mushrooms, finely sliced (supermarkets must have sorted mushrooms pre-packed as a box)
• 3 cups of rice (Short-grain or medium grain, just not to be a long-grain)
• Possibly 1 tablespoon of White Wine
• 750ml (about 3 bowls) of Veggie Stock or Chicken Stock
• Salt, Pepper and olive oil

Preparing Risotto

Get the pot up, put the Stock in and let it to boil. While that’s heating up, dice the celery and onion into 1 x 1 cm squares, and the mushrooms can be finely sliced. At the time the stock boils, turn off the heat and pour the stock into another bowl or container or something else to let go of it aside, because I’ll need to use that pot to cook the risotto itself.

Dicing up the celery.

Stir, Stir and Stir.

Drip a few drops of olive oil into the pot, turn on the heat (to low level). As the pot should be hot already, you can chute the celery and onion in and stir-fry them to cook. Stir the mixture regularly to avoid burning.

Now you can get the rice out and wash it, washing rice is so basic so I’ll not cover about this here, however remember not to rinse to much otherwise you’ll wash the rice taste out!

Then chute the rice and mushroom into the pot’s mixture and keep stirring – once rice’s added, it’s more easily to burn.

Stir for about 3-4 minutes, taste the mixture to check whether the rice is thoroughly cooked or not. If that’s not yet, keep stirring. Once done you can then start to add the stock in, a small portion each time. You can decide how much you like to add to adjust the risotto’s flavour. Then is the white wine, what I did is roughly dripped some into the rice.

Keep stirring and taste it…

Once you feel almost done – looks and tastes like soft and creamy, you can turn off the heat at this time. Add a pinch of salt and pepper to slight season the risotto, and get the cheese ready – grated it finely straight into the mixture. Add those butter in as well and again keep stirring.

When the butter melted into the rice, your risotto is ready!

Preparing Steak

Preparing Steaks.

Steak is much simple to cook, just follow this easy 10 steps:

1. Preheat your pan and drip some olive oil in.
2. Once the pan’s hot enough, just lay your steaks in.
3. Let the steaks fry for about 2 minutes.
4. “Wobble” the pan to let the steaks turn a bit (but not to flip them!)
5. Season the steak with some salt and pepper (no need to be too much)
6. Now flip over the steaks (use tongs please).
7. Again let them fry for another 2 minutes and wobble.
8. Slightly season the steaks again.
9. Flip over again and fry a bit more (no more then 1 minute) and turn off the heat.
10. That’s it!

Now everything’s ready and just put them altogether, enjoy!