I made mushroom risotto for the second time on Sunday and decided that it is a therapeutic dish. As you may know risotto's creaminess is achieved by adding small amounts of broth to arborio rice while constantly stirring, waiting until each addition is absorbed before adding more. In other words, it is necessary to SLOW DOWN to make it well. The first time I made this I had had a terrible day at work and this time I was feeling very "over-stimulated" and wound-up from working on my book. Mine was made from this recipe, with half the amount of mushrooms and without butter, which would be overkill in my opinion.
This meal led to watching the "Rome" episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations", which led to making Spaghetti alla Carbonara on Monday night. It was shaping up to be picture-perfect traditional, down to the Pecorino from the Roman countryside, until I decided to settle for using bacon instead of guanciale or even pancetta. This after a shot-in-the dark Google search for "guanciale Cincinnati" turned up nothing but links for Dr. Anthony Guanciale. I made it by following this recipe word for word and it turned out great.
