Comfort food: steamy, creamy, decadent and dreamy. Should stick to the ribs, warm the belly, and be easy to eat while on the couch wearing a snuggy. Two words: jambalaya. Risotto. You know they were meant to be together.

Makes 6-8 big servings.

Step 1: Ingredients

[Important Note: the most important ingredient for risotto is arborio rice. Other kinds of rice don't have the starch that provides the luscious cream texture. If you start with another kind of rice, you'll get something tasty at the end, but it won't be much like risotto.]

This is a crock pot recipe.

1.5 cups + a separate half cup arborio rice
3 cups chicken stock or chicken broth
1/8 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white wine
1 can diced tomatoes (15.5 ounces)
2 tbs garlic powder or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 green pepper, coarsely chopped
1 lb andouille or supermarket "cajun" sausage
1 tbs ground cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground paprika
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (or, about 3 shakes)
1 tbs thyme
2 tsp oregano
+
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 lb uncooked shrimp

Set aside 1/2 cup of rice and leave the shrimp and thecheese in the refrigerator

Combine the first fourteen ingredients in a crock pot in the order listed. Cook on high, stirring every half hour for two hours.

CAUTION: VARIABILITY!
In general, a cup and a half of rice will take up 4.5 cups of liquid.
Liquids in the ingredients include the broth, wine, olive oil, juice in the diced tomatoes, water in the various vegetables, etc. Depending on the season, the freshness of your vegetables, the price of your canned tomatoes, and whether you started sampling the leftover wine before you measured the other ingredients, your preparation may have more liquid in it than mine. If after 2 hours the mix seems more like soup than a hearty rice dish, add another 1/4 cup of rice from your reserve. Let cook another 30 minutes, then stir. If the materials are still soupy, add the rest of the rice and cook another 30 minutes.

Step 2: Once the Rice Is Cooked, Add the Cheese

After two (or more, see caution above) hours of cooking, the crock pot should be full of rich, fully cooked, moist-but-not-soupy rice.

Add 1/3 of the cup of parmesan cheese to the top of the rice, then fold it into the mix by lifting rice from the bottom of the pot to the top using a wooden spoon or spatula. When the first cheese has been mixed in, add a second 1/3 cup of cheese and fold it, too, into the rice. Finally, repeat a third time. This should mix the cheese in well from top to bottom.

Step 3: Finally, the Shrimp

After mixing in the parmesan cheese, add a layer of raw shrimp to the top of the rice.
Replace the crock pot's lid and allow it to cook on low for 20-30 minutes.

Watch through the lid-- when cooked through, the shrimp will change color from grey-ish to pink.

Step 4: Enjoy!

Serve yourself. Your Snuggie and your sofa await!

I'm still new to this-- if you have any suggestions for improvement, I'd be grateful to hear them. Thanks for reading!