(foreign language)
- Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime with Alvin.
Today, I'll be making Sanji's Seafood Risotto
from One Piece.
Now it's often debated whether this is a seafood risotto
or a seafood fried rice, but based on the visual
that the rice grains are pale and not separated,
I'm gonna go with the idea that this is a risotto.
One of the items seen clearly nestled
within the risotto is shrimp.
So I'm gonna cut the shells off
and remove the little poop tube
inside eight ounces of shrimp.
A nice trick is to use paper towel
for a little bit of extra grip on that too,
and we won't just toss away these shells just yet.
Sanji's a pretty resourceful cook,
so we're gonna find a use for that really soon.
Moving on.
So here I have a tray of pretty commonly found vegetables
and scraps that one might find on a pirate ship.
Alright, I just gotta go ahead
and cut these up really quick.
Alright, now that our vegetables have been cut,
we're gonna, oh, that, that was too fast?
Alright, here's what it looked like in slow motion.
I'm quartering one large onion with the skin.
It's just a rough chop.
Cutting up six to eight parsley stems,
two medium carrots and three celery stocks.
Nothing crazy, just a pretty rough chop overall.
Another ingredient that we do see
in the risotto is octopus.
So I have here a three pound octopus
and in order to cook it more efficiently
I'm gonna go and cut off its legs.
Honestly, sounds kind of rough
but when you're on a ship, in a vast blue ocean,
you take the food that you can get.
The final visible element in the risotto seems
to be a white ring, which I'm probably guessing is calamari.
So I'm gonna cut up six ounces
of squid tubes into rings.
Pretty much done here.
Now it's time to move to the stove.
Since this is a seafood risotto,
making a seafood stock makes sense.
So I'm heating up three table spins of oil
in a large pan and toasting the shrimp shells along
with some lobster shells we had lying around in the studio.
This part's always pretty cool.
You get to watch the shells go
from a dull gray to a nice, vibrant and bright orange
which usually means you can now do some other stuff.
I'm gonna go ahead and dump in those octopus tentacles
along with the octopus head,
and after those cook with the shells for about two minutes,
I'm gonna pour in 48 ounces of water followed
by all our nice vegetables.
For extra aromatics, I'm adding in two bay leaves,
two teaspoons of black peppercorns, but not salt.
Not just yet.
I'm just gonna bring this up to a small simmer
and let this cook for about an hour or so,
just so that the flavors get a nice chance to infuse
and the octopus gets a chance to tenderize.
Okay, it's been an hour.
I'm gonna go ahead and take the octopus legs out
out because that's gonna go in the risotto itself
and I'm gonna go ahead and strain the rest of this stock
through a fine mesh sieve.
In case you curious about the smell,
it doesn't smell like fish at all.
Kind of smells like chicken noodle soup
that you might want on a nice winter day.
Just one last step before I get to cooking this risotto.
Gotta cut up this onion and shall real quick.
Alright, now that we've cut up our onion and shal...
too fast again?
Steve, can we get an instant replay?
Here you see that I'm finely chopping
a yellow onion and a shallot.
Oh, this kind of burns.
Oh, hold on. Let me just put on some protection real quick.
Aah. Perfect.
Now that our onions and shallots are finally chopped,
it's time to cook.
To start things off I'm heating two tablespoons
in a high-walled sauce pan over medium heat.
In go the onions and the shallots adding a little bit
of salt to help it sweat,
and these are just gonna go until they're translucent,
for about three to four minutes.
Joining the sweaty onion and shallots
will be seven ounces of arborio rice.
Ooh, whoops.
Let's just get that outta there.
I'd like to toast the rice in the pan
for about two to three minutes until the exterior
of each granule starts to turn translucent.
To deglaze them adding in four ounces of a dry white wine.
Stirring it around until the risotto has absorbed
pretty much all the wine.
Now for the fun part of making risotto.
Now it's time to add the seafood stock we made earlier,
approximately one fourth of a cup at a time,
stirring the rice and letting the stock absorb
before adding in the next edition.
I've been told that if you do not stir
the risotto constantly,
Italians maya be a little angry at you,
and well that doesn't sound very fun.
I'm repeating this process until the stock
is nearly gone.
Adding the stalk, stirring it constantly
and waiting for the stock to absorb.
Once there's only about a quarter cup of stock left,
I'm gonna add the shrimp, the squid, and the octopus
back into the risotto with the remaining stock.
The shrimp turns a nice bright orange
and the squid rings start to firm up into a circular shape.
To prevent over cooking, I'm turning off the heat
and adding an ounce and a half of cold butter,
and about two tablespoons of finally chopped parsley,
which I believe are the little green specs found
in Sanji's Seafood Risotto.
Season to taste, plate up, and I present to you,
our first version of Sanji's Seafood Risotto,
and a plate that is a little too small for this.
As for taste?
Very, very, very seafoodie.
Almost like a seafood porridge of some sorts.
Maybe it's because I overcooked the rice a little bit,
or maybe it's because we had a lot
of ingredients left over from the shoot
but I did wanna see what another version might look like.
So I'm gonna run it back.
Frying up the leftover shallots, the onions and rice
in a little bit of butter before adding in fish stock,
which we happen to have in a container in the fridge.
Not really sure where that was from
but it always feels satisfying to use up stuff
we find in the fridge.
The cooking process remains the same.
Adding in stock, stirring til combined,
waiting for absorption, adding in more stock,
and just like before I'm adding in the leftover seafood
that we didn't use in the first batch into this batch.
But I did remember that in my risotto video watching days,
a good amount of them had some cheese folded in at the end
for that nice consistency,
and we did happen to have a lot of Parmesan
lying around in the fridge, so,
I'm gonna fold in about two generous handfuls
of Parmesan cheese.
I know that seafood and cheese usually don't mix
but I was curious to see how this was gonna turn out
and voila version two of Sanji's Seafood Risotto
made with a lot of leftovers
and ingredients found in the fridge.
Not as gourmet as the first version,
but honestly this tastes so much better.
Whether it's because the fish stock was already really salty
or the fact that we added a lot of Parmesan cheese
but this tastes amazing.
This is a dish that I think
if you could feed to any person who is hungry,
they'd eat the whole thing in an instant,
and that is exactly what I'm going to do.
(ambient music)