Orzo Risotto

It's a dreary and rainy day here so I wanted something warm and comforting for lunch.  I still had the entire batch of my roasted chicken stock in the fridge and I really wanted pasta.  Then I remembered Mark Bittman's Orzo Risotto.  Orzo is rice shaped pasta and in this recipe it's cooked in just enough stock; no need to drain it.  This is one dish where the quality of the stock used makes a HUGE difference.  The better the stock, the better the resulting dish tastes.

Start by finely chopping an onion.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.  Cook the onion until softened and translucent.  Forgot to take a picture of the cooked onion but imagine it's there in the foamy goodness of the butter.

Heat up 3 cups of stock in another pan or in the microwave.  I was too lazy to do either.  As a result this took a little longer to make than it should have.
Add 1.5 cups of orzo to the cooked onions and mix.  Add the heated stock and cook, covered, over medium low heat for approximately 15 minutes.
When the pasta is cooked, stir in 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese and some finely chopped parsley.  Note the absence of parsley in mine.  Again, I was too lazy to chop it.


Serve with more Parmesan and parsley.

Mr. Bittman suggests serving this as a side dish.  Sometimes I serve it as an accompaniment BBQ meats, sometimes I eat it straight out of the pot.  Hard to say.  Today I ate it alongside a salad.  P and K ate it on it's own.  P, the hardy eater that she is, had 3 helpings.  I love that girl!