Seafood Risotto with Arugula and Basil Salad

Step 1: Risotto

Combine the light chicken stock and lobster stock in a pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and keep hot but not boiling.

Peel and finely mince the white onion.

Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan, add the minced onion, and sweat over a low heat for 3 minutes. Add the rice, and stir constantly for 5 minutes until it becomes translucent, then deglaze with white wine. Reduce until almost dry, cover almost completely with the stock, and simmer gently, stirring constantly.

When the rice has absorbed all of the liquid, add more liquid to cover the rice almost completely and continue cooking, stirring all the time. Repeat this same procedure five or six times.

After 18 minutes, the rice should be cooked. At this point, fold the butter, the olive oil, the spider crab meat (prepared below) and the whipped cream into the risotto. The rice should be tender and moist.

Step 2: Seafood

Separate the spider crabs’ legs from their bodies.

Cook the legs for 3 minutes in a simmering court-bouillon. Cook the bodies in the same manner for 12 minutes, placing them in the court-bouillon head first. Drain the legs and tails and shell them, making sure not to break the meat.

Collect the roe, strain through a fine-meshed tamis, mix with the crab meat and set aside for the risotto.

Clean the squid and cut 4 triangles of the same size out of it. Lightly score them both ways diagonally and evenly every 1/5 inch (5 mm). Pat dry with a dishtowel.

Soak all of the shellfish separately under running water for 3 hours, then drain.

Heat some olive oil in a cast iron pot. Cut the shallots into thick round slices and sweat them with the unpeeled garlic, the thyme and bay leaf. Add the shellfish and the calamari triangles, deglaze with the white wine, cover and let cook.

When the shellfish has opened, shell all except for the hardshell clams, and filter the cooking juices.

Clean the supions and separate the tentacles from the bodies, draining the latter.

Shell the king prawns.

Sauté the small calamari and king prawns in some olive oil in a very hot pan, then add the white calamari triangles, shellfish and filtered cooking juices, a dash each of olive oil and lemon juice, and the shelled spider crab legs.

Step 3: Plating

Spoon the risotto onto the serving plates, place a bouquet of arugula seasoned with olive oil in the middle, and surround the dish with the shellfish. Sprinkle with some opal basil tips and serve immediately.