What's cookin': Bacon and Chicken Risotto-esque

No, it's not quite Risotto... to my mind, that's Italian terrain, and I made some modifications that, historically, they wouldn't much agree with. So, its...

Ingredients

• 2c. chicken broth
• ~2T. olive oil
• 1/4lb. bacon (4 strips, in my case)
• 1 boneless skinless chicken breast (or 1/2c. or so of leftover roasted chicken)
• 1 red onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1T. butter
• 1/2c. risotto (arborio) rice
• 1/2c. mead (the original calls for white wine... but, while I'm not likely to drink leftover white wine in a reasonable time frame, I will drink mead)
• 1t. sage
• frozen peas

Equipment

• saucepan
• deep frypan
• wooden spoon
• slotted spoon or similar
• ladle
  

Procedure

• Prep those ingredients: chop the onion, mince or press the garlic, and cut the bacon and chicken into bite-size bits.
• Pour the chicken stock into the saucepan and leave on low heat (this preheat just helps keep things moving later on)
• Heat olive oil in frypan over medium heat... as you approach "working" temperature, add the bacon pieces and cook to your desired texture (for me, that's "not wiggly, but not crunchy").
• Remove the bacon from the pan with your spoons and drain on paper towels.
• If you're dealing with raw chicken instead of leftover, add it to the pan and brown. Careful, this is the most "spitty" part of the grease-cooking... long sleeves are pretty much mandatory for this. Once browned, remove the chicken from the pan and stash it with the bacon.
• Add the chopped onion to the pan, cook until softened but not crispy.
• Add the garlic to the pan, cook for about a minute.
• Add the butter to the pan, stir to melt and combine
• Add the rice to the pan, stir to coat and cook for about 30 seconds
• Add the mead to the pan. Once the mead starts to bubble, reduce heat to medium-low
• Let the mead reduce down to almost nothing... then (finally!) add the chicken broth to the pan, one ladle at a time, allowing temperature to recover between ladles.
• Add the sage and stir to combine
• Return the chicken and bacon to the pan
• Let the concoction stew, stirring occasionally, while the rice cooks and the liquid reduces. In my case, it was somewhere in the 20-30 minute timeframe before the mix was more "oatmeal" than "soup" consistency, by which time the rice had cooked nicely.
• Add frozen peas to the pan... at this point, it's really a personal preference as to how much peas to other stuff you want, so let your judgment be your guide. It should take about 2-3 minutes for the peas to cook sufficiently.

This makes a reasonably tasty meal without getting into the minute moisture-control that "real" risotto involves (think spreading out that broth adding across the entire cook time, and having to keep a closer eye on it the whole time). The recipe I worked from called for parmesan to be added at the last, but the recipe turns out fine without it... although, I might try some other "chicken" herbs (thyme and rosemary, for example) to tune the flavor a bit, maybe some pepper... at any rate, this should readily serve two people as a single-course meal, more with add-ons like bread, salads, or the like.