Start by soaking the dried mushrooms with the boiling water, do this at least 1 hour before you make the risotto so that the mushrooms get soft, so that the grit sinks to the bottom of the jug and so that the stock is full of flavour. Slice and pan fry the portobello mushrooms and season lightly.

Remove the mushrooms from your pan and add a little olive oil, add the finely diced shallot, celery and garlic. Stir over a medium low heat for just a minute before adding the rice, stir this around for a further couple of minutes so that you rough up the smooth surface of the rice, this makes soaking up the stock more efficient.

After a couple of minutes stirring add the now chopped up wild mushrooms, then add the white wine and stir until the wine has been absorbed, then add about 1/3 of the mushroom stock. Take care not to add the sediment from the mushrooms, I've used a fine mesh sieve but you can pour yours through a coffee filter?

You can now add the portabello mushrooms back in the pan now and stir gently for the next 20 minutes approx, adding more stock when the last amount has absorbed - evaporated.

Taste the risotto for flavour but also for the texture of the rice, you want it to be soft but not mushy like porridge, I like my rice grains to be separate but on the verge of breaking up. If you have used all of your stock but need more cooking just add some hot water as I did in the second image. Once your happy with the rice add the butter. If your a purist and object to this calm down you can add olive oil but butter makes it better in my opinion.

Time to add the herbs and parmesan, check for seasoning

Spoon into a bowl of your choice, it should form a small mound which can be encouraged to lay flat by tapping the bottom or shaking the bowl. I've used the remainder of my parmesan as shavings but finely grated would be fine, I've added more parsley and got stuck in. These screen shots are taking from my channel youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qSNtml9uuw&t=178s