Red Berry Risotto Oatmeal

I found this recipe a new wonderful blog that I found last week called melskitchencafe.com.  The recipe intrigued me for multiple reasons.  First of all it was was rice pudding and I love rice pudding.  This looked different because it incorporated some oatmeal as well.  I was also interested to try this because it was made in a rice cooker.  Sadly it just wasn't my day for cooking.  First of all I had no steel cut oats.  I did not buy them on purpose because I have oat groats and a marga grain press which I regularly use to roll oats.  It also can crunch them to make steel cut oats, but of course this morning it would only roll them no matter what setting I put it on.  I ended up trying to chop the groats in my blender - no luck, then with my stick blender - sent oats flying even with a paper plate on top.

Of course my food processor is dead so that was no option.  They ended up some powdery, some steel cut size, and even some whole groats.  All cooked well, so technically I could have just saved the time and used the groats I guess.  I finally got them in the rice cooker and turned it on.  I was thinking it was a ton of water for the rice cooker, but left it because after all I was following a recipe right?  Well, I headed to take a shower because I had just run 10 miles in the hot, humid, Houston May weather.  I thought this would be a perfect meal. Throw all ingredients in the rice cooker, cooks while I get ready, perfect right?  No.  Took forever to get the ingredients together and  this is the mess I returned to.   What a mess.

I didn't buy a vanilla bean but I had a very old one.  I threw it in while the rice was cooking and scraped the seeds at the end since it needed to re-hydrate again.  I will probably just use vanilla extract in the future because vanilla beans are too expensive for me to want to buy regularly.
The rice was tasty and well cooked even with all of the liquid that ended up on my counter.  I will probably try this next time in a pan - or do it in the rice cooker but use about 1/2 of the water to start and monitor it more closely so it doesn't make such a mess.  I like a rice pudding a little sweeter than this, but resisted the urge to add more sweetener because truly it was quite tasty as it was.  I'm just used to a sweeter rice pudding.

Here are the directions.


Ingredients

• 1/2 cup steel-ground oatmeal 
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 6 cups water
• 1 vanilla bean, scraped
• 1/2 cup sugar  (I used 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup splenda)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 bag frozen raspberries, thawed  (I used 2 cups frozen and did not thaw them  I like this because you add them at the end, it cools the rice and thaws the berries all at 1 time.)
OR
1 cup ripe raspberries
1 cup ripe strawberries, quartered

In a rice cooker add all the ingredients, except the fruit. Cook until done. (Alternately, you can cook the mixture in a large pot. Bring to a quick boil and then lower to a simmer and cook, covered, for about 25-30 minutes. I will try this next time.)

Remove rice and oatmeal from the rice cooker. Add raspberries and stir to combine. Stir in strawberries and continue to stir until the berries have turned the risotto slightly pink, 1-2 minutes. Serve immediately. If you are planning on saving leftovers and heating up in the morning, only add berries to each individual serving the morning of and not to the whole batch.

**Making this again only in a pan.  Changed ingredients to be all splenda and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, and a tiny dash of cinnamon.  I did end up sprinkling more splenda on top this time. I'd definitely add more next time.  I just like my rice pudding sweeter.