On my mom and I's Italian vacation back in May, I discovered a new love: risotto. A delicious Italian rice dish that's full of flavor and tailored to my own tastebuds. On the cruise, I had two types of risotto. My favorite was mushroom and spinach risotto which combines two of my favorite ingredients anyway.

I generally don't choose rice as a side dish or main ingredient. I'm more of a pasta or potato kind of girl. However, I do enjoy a nice dish of brown rice every now and then. So I'm not exactly opposed to rice, but not exactly enthralled at the idea.

So risotto was kind of a shock at how much I do enjoy it. Enough to even take an attempt at cooking it a few nights ago. For a first experience, it turned out pretty good so I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

First, risotto takes a special kind of rice or grain. I used arborio but I've heard that barley is also an excellent grain to use especially for us diabetics since it's high in fiber and other nutrients. So just substitute your acceptable grain (it has to be a certain kind so that it absorbs the stock correctly and doesn't end up too dry or too mushy).

Here are my ingredients:
1 cup of arborio rice
1 can of chicken stock (low sodium)
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
A little olive oil
Spices to your own liking (I used basil, oregano, garlic, and a bit of thyme)

The next part is the tricky part that I didn't get quite right so a few bites of my rice turned out a bit crunchy. I think it's all about the heat and timing though.

I placed my spices and olive oil in a skillet (I'd recommend a larger one) and turned up the heat. You can add onions if you'd like and saute them in the oil for several minutes. Once that's done, add your rice or grain to the skillet and turn up the heat again. You want to keep it very hot. You'll need to almost constantly stir the rice in the skillet, ideally to a translucent color although I didn't ever achieve that with my arborio. I'd recommend doing this for a good 7 to 10 minutes.

While that's going on, you also want to heat up your chicken stock (you can use other stock like vegetable or beef or seafood depending on your own liking). This needs to be at least warm but preferably hot when it hits the rice.

After your stock is heated and your rice is sauteed, you'll slowly add the stock one cup at a time to the rice. You need to maintain a high heat and constant stirring during this portion so that the rice cooks thoroughly. Pour more stock once the original stock is absorbed. You may need more than one can of stock to truly cook the rice. You can check after the stock is absorbed (basically boil the rice but not as in a pot of water) by taste testing.

Once that's done, I quickly heated my cream of mushroom soup and slowly added that to my rice and stock. You can also add fresh mushrooms, sauteed spinach, or other ingredients to your liking. The ease of a can of soup is perfect for a quick meal and still maintains the taste and texture needed for your risotto.

It may not be a perfect risotto recipe. I'm sure an Italian would tell me that it needs a lot of work. But it was tasty and satisfying for me. I did find that more stock would have been better in the long run (reheating the next day didn't turn out so well) and that I really wanted some fresh vegetables.

The great thing about this recipe is that it can be tweaked to your own taste. I'm not a fan of salty taste so I bought low sodium stock (which is generally better for us anyway). I really like mushrooms so that was a soup of choice for me. But anything can be done with this. The basic premise is that the rice and stock are mixed then any other ingredients can be added.

I'm dying to try my recipe again with some fresh ingredients and hopefully getting the rice thoroughly cooked in every bite. But I can say that it was still a successful, fantastic recipe that kept my blood sugars stable (just calculate your carbs based on your grain and portion size). I'll definitely keep these ingredients as a quick standby when I'm craving something creamy, decadent, but fairly nutritious.