giada's dirty risotto

I snagged Giada De Laurentiis' recipe for "Dirty Risotto" from the Food Network website. Up until now, my risotto experimentation has lent itself mostly to vegetarian fare. Not deliberately, but lately that's what I had been emphasizing and/or working on. Needless to say, these experiments have not been soundly well-received by the manfolk, nor the teen manfolk in the house. So I was intrigued by this recipe, since it has Italian sausage as one of its ingredients. I also liked that it didn't in fact contain chicken liver, unlike the Dirty Rice of my barbecue restaurant cook days from high school. I followed the recipe closely (even using pancetta, where up to this point I have been substituting bacon for pancetta in every recipe I've come across. Sorry, it's just that I couldn't find the pancetta in my store and was too unmotivated to ask someone.). The only thing I didn't include was the fresh Italian parsley (I've found my shopping list writing brain blanks out when it sees fresh Italian parsley in a recipe -- and many other fresh herbs as well. I don't recall ever making a conscious decision not to buy it; I don't even recall ever reading it in the ingredients.).

Anyway, it was well-received. P. raved about it -- "better than soup, stew, or whatever!", and L., after asking "we're having risotto, and what else???", had multiple helpings. So thanks, once again, to Giada, for a well-conceived recipe.