Seafood Risotto w/Shrimp

Remember this photo? 

Yeps, Christmas dinner feast of lobster and hot pot.  Expanding on our lobster feast, I saved the shells and steaming liquid to cook lunch the following day - seafood risotto with bok choy and shrimp. While it's easy, it does take a little time to cook down the lobster broth and then make the actual risotto.  If you don't want to use the broth right away, I still recommend cooking down the broth and freezing so you can use for future recipes! 

Lobster Broth Ingredients

5 cups water

Remaining water you used to steam the lobster (we had a good 2-3 cups remaining)

Lobster shells (the head has the most flavor)

2 celery stalks, chopped into pieces

1/2 onion, cut into large chunks

2 carrots, chopped into pieces, no need to peel

Couple dashes of garlic powder

1. In a very large pot, put all the ingredients together and bring to a boil. Add more water if you need.  Bring down to a medium heat and cook for about 20-30 minutes. Periodically mix the pot so that the shells at the top get their chance at the bottom of the pot in the liquids.  

2. Once done, take off heat and strain so you are left with the beautiful lobster broth!  Put in fridge if you are not using immediately.  As mentioned earlier, this would also be great to freeze and bring out when you need a seafood broth for a pasta or rice dish. If it's too much to use at once, perhaps freeze them in ice cube trays so when you need a boost of seafood flavoring - say to a great bowl of ramen - you can simply toss in a cube or two.

Lobster Risotto

Lobster broth

3 cups arborio rice

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1/2 onion (remaining onion from above)

1/2-1 cup white wine (or whatever you have left)

10 shrimp, thawed and deveined 

Chopped basil

Freshly grated parm. cheese (however much you'd like)

Beware, you'll be using several bowls and pots!

1. Heat up the lobster broth in another large pot until boiling. Here's a neat little trick - since we'll be serving the risotto with shrimp, I cooked the shrimp in the lobster broth first!  I like to likely under cook the shrimp since we'll add it back to the risotto later.  Keep watch of this as the shrimp cook quickly - take out, set aside and turn the heat to medium to keep the broth hot.

2. Heat a large pot with olive oil.  Add the garlic and onion. Cook until onion is fragrant and somewhat clear. Add the rice and give it a cook mix to coat each grain with the oil olive goodness.  

3. Add in the white wine and give it a good ole stir, scrapping up the bits and yum stuff at the bottom of the pot. Turn down to medium high and let this cook until at least half the wine has been absorbed/cooked off.

4. Hope you are not terribly hungry at this time because it will be another 20 minutes or so before this is ready....  Turn down the heat to medium low.  Take two ladle full of broth, add to the rice, stir and watch the grains absorb the broth goodness.  Make sure to continually stir so nothing sticks.  As the liquid disappears, keep adding ladles of the lobster broth until the rice is cooked and you get a creamy goodness mixture.  Don't feel pressured to use all the broth.  Or, if you are low on broth, you can substitute with chicken broth or water - just make sure to warm it up before adding to the rice.

5. If you'd like to serve with veggies, bring another pot of water to a boil. Toss in the bok choy and cook until done - about 5-7 minutes.  Strain and set aside.  Seriously, any veggies will work in my opinion.  We just needed to balance out the overload of carbs....well, as much as we could..even if just a tiny bit.

6. Once the risotto is done, take a quick taste and see if you need additional salt or pepper.  My broth had a naturally salty flavor so I didn't need to add much.  Toss some basil on top and add in the cheese.  

7. Serve in bowls with 2-3 shrimp and some veggies.  Enjoy!

Restaurant Review: Cova Wine & Tapas Bar for their S&S Special

I'm a big fan of steak - but it usually has to be my dad's steak. When he buys them, he soaks them in sauce in a ziplock bag and freezes it so when its time to eat, it thaws and compltely infused with the flavor. Delicious!

Tuesday night at Cova on Washington is Steak and Shrimp night - all for only $15! Go early because they serve what they have, once out, you're out of luck. Cova is known more for their wine and tapas. Beware, it's a small, cozy little place with roughly 15-20 sets of large tables. They were kind enough to pull together a group of tables for our big group. Its small so when its packed with people, its incredibly loud and hard to hear folks talking down the table if you have a dinner group of 5 or more.

The best part of the night, when driving up to the restaurant, we saw a grill outside across the street and a pile of white plates sitting next to it. Pretty hilarious that they cook the steaks outside and then run them across the street to the restaurant. So, let's get on to the food:

Lobster Risotto w/saffron and crab - Being from Texas, we're always curious about portion. So while it's labeled as a tapa, it's definitely large enough for dinner. It was fairly tasty but definitely no comparison to Tony's lobster risotto. The lobster flavor was not incredibly prominent and unfortunately, it had way too many peanuts/nuts, which overpowered the seafood hints and took away from the creaminess that risottos should be. It was good, not great.

Steak and Shrimp - This looked delicious served on the plate and was a fairly large portion. The shrimps were grilled and seasoned well but its hard to mess up shrimp! The steak was cooked just right at medium rare with it seared on the outside and a good light pink on the inside. The texture was a little chewy, making it less than great and the seasoning should have been kicked up a notch.

Overall, I give this place a three out of five stars. Service was pretty good and accomodating to help arrange our tables, parking was a tad slow (but the poor valet guy was on his own), and the special Tuesday deal gave it a boost in rating. The risotto wasn't bad, just wasn't as good as others I have had and steak was blah, not memorable. Maybe this rating will be higher when I go for the wine and their special tapas rather than their steak and shrimp specials.