I love risotto. It is often my meal of choice at an Italian restaurant. However, I never make it at home. It is pretty labour intensive with adding the stock one ladle at a time. Just enough work to deter me on a weeknight.
I picked up some barley on the weekend. Although not terribly exotic, it is new to me! I am trying to experiment with new grains. I have been stuck in a rice and pasta rut and am blown away by the number of interesting grains you can get. I came across some recipes that substituted pearl barley for Arborio rice and thought about taking a risotto recipe and trying it with barley. I settled on an asparagus and lemon risotto. Once neat trick to use when preparing asparagus is that it has a natural break point. This is where the woody part of the speer separates from the more tender part. If you just bend it near the bottom of the speer, it will break at a given point
