Caribbean Pineapple and Coconut and Rum Risotto!

OK... I have tried twice to make a sweet creamery Coconut Milk and Rum Risotto.  Much controversy.  Meaning one of us liked it a lot and one of us would just rather have "plane" risotto.

Here's what i did...

We will call the first batch ... BATCH A...

Batch A was made with...

1 cup Arborio Rice (Just Jackie and I, an experiment, so I didn't want left overs... just in case)
3 slices of pineapple, diced
1/2 cup Coconut Milk
1/2 cup Pineapple Rum
!/2 cup Pineapple Juice

Make the rice in the usual way... simmer, add liquids slowly and stir stir stir...

I added the pineapple at the very end so it would contrast warm rice and cool pineapple.

The verdict...

Well, it was paired poorly.  It was paired with the garlic salmon.  It is sweet, with the pineapple and the coconut milk.  The salmon had no HOT spice (just garlic), so the mix was not what I was after... But close.

So, we move to Batch B...

The rice in batch B had the same ingredients... 1/2 cup each coconut milk, pineapple Rum and Pineapple Juice.  I left off the whole pineapple (overkill), and added some savory items... Spinach and mushrooms.  I put these in towards the end of the cook, so they would still have a bite to them and not over cooked.

I served this with the Spicy JERK/PINEAPPLE Chicken wings I blogged about yesterday.  The pairing was exactly what I wanted... a bite of spicy wings, a bite of sweet coconut risotto.  This worked very well.  A nice contrast to each other.

The combination meal was exactly right...

Where we have controversy is the question of making this again.  One of us liked the dish (without the chunks of pineapple, that was just a bit too much).  One of us thought that the only time to make this dish was when we were eating something a little too spicy.  Too spicy meat, paired with too sweet risotto.

So, as a stand alone risotto, it is still a work in process.  As a compliment to a spicy dish, it works exactly right!