Mediterranean Chicken Risotto

Sarah!'s Note:

Baby spinach, semi-dried tomatoes and olives are a great combination in this risotto. As I have only just discovered the delights of olives I am finding more and more ways to use them. Just to note, a few people making this have found that one cup of semi-dried tomatoes is too overpowering, so you may want to cut it back to half a cup. (Please not: The sun-dried tomatoes listed are actually semi-dried.)

• Total Time: 40 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 500 g chicken breasts, diced
• 1 -2 teaspoon minced garlic clove
• 1 3/4 cups arborio rice
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 5 cups chicken stock (hot)
• 1 (150 g) bag baby spinach
• 1 cup sun-dried tomato (semi-dried)
• 3/4 cup kalamata olive, sliced
• 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Keep stock simmering.
2. Heat oil in large pan and add chicken, cook until almost cooked through and add garlic, cook for another 1-2 minutes.
3. Add rice and stir until grains are coated with oil and glistening.
4. Add white wine and stir until it is absorbed by the rice grains.
5. Start adding the hot stock 2 ladles at a time, stirring between additions until the liquid has been absorbed.
6. After the last addition of stock add baby spinach leaves and stir until wilted.
7. Add semi-dried tomatoes and olives, stir until heated through.
8. Add 2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese and stir through.
9. Serve with extra Parmesan if desired.

Reviews

[Spencer #2]

An awesome risotto! It seemed like a healthy meal overall. I used low-sodium chicken broth and doubled the baby spinach. Don't skimp on the liquids or you will have a dry sticky risotto.

[Dr. Jenny]

I thought that we would love this risotto since we love each of the ingredients, but we were not as fond of it as I had hoped. I think the nice things about this dish are: easy to prepare, chicken was moist and tender, and the risotto was creamy. Unfortunately, I had been saving a hard copy of this recipe for quite some time and did not look back to see what the other reviewers had said. If I had, I would have seen that most of them suggested cutting back on the sun dried tomatoes, which I did not do. As written, I think the sun-dried tomatoes totally overpowered the dish. My suggestions for future chefs would be to read the reviews and scale back the sun dried tomatoes significantly. Also, DH suggested seasoning the chicken first.

[LilKiwiChicken]

Thanks Sarah, this had a lovely colour and flavour & was really easy to prepare and make. I think using the full cup of tomatoes slightly drowned out the flavours of the other ingredients so would probably use less next time. I made this for ZWT4. Thanks.