risotto – Food That We Make

Cauliflower and Leek Risotto

hannahnicklin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:05:31 +0000

ECONOMY DRIVE TIME. So a month into freelancing and it turns out unpredictable money is SCARY. Especially just before Christmas. The stuff it allows me to do is totally worth it, but I’m also starting to try and really reduce food spend. Just until I have some goddam reserves built up. So, enter a phase on Food That We Make of cheap things. But still tasty. Always tasty. First up, a super simple leek and cauliflower risotto. The rice, cauliflower and leeks all cheap cheap cheap. A little bit of cheese goes a long way, and cheap cooking wine will last a long while for it. I still didn’t scrimp on fresh parsley, though. It lifts the flavour too much to take out. So yeah, big amount, good flavour, very filling. My version makes the cauli quite smooshy, and I like the melty cauli style, but if you like your brassicas firm, then remove all stalkage and add with 15-20 minutes to go.

Serves: 4 | Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook time about 30-40 mins
Nutritional Info: 593 kcal, 74g carbs, 25g fat, 15g protein

Ingredients pic!

weigh everything out, slice the leeks thinly, crush and chop the garlic, break the cauliflower into florets, taking off the thickest bit of the stalks. Set the stock on to boil. Heat the oil in a well big pan.

Add the garlic, leeks and cauli and soften over the heat for 5-10 mins

Add the risotto rice, stir through and cook for about 2 mins until the rice is slightly glossy

Add the wine, stir until absorbed

If you’re not in a mega rush like I was, add the stock a bit by bit until absorbed and the rice is al dente. If in a massive rush add it all and hope it’s the right amount. Reduce for about 2o-25 mins

When it’s reduced, add the butter and parmesan, stir through for a couple minute more

Then add the parsley, season to taste (loads of black pepper) and serve. Voila:

Mushroom spelt barley ‘risotto’

hannahnicklin — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:10:58 +0000

Technically this isn’t risotto, because it’s not made with risotto rice (arborio, in fact), but HF Whittingstall uses the word ‘speltotto’ or something which is a portmanteau that makes me feel a bit odd, and that I can’t type without paying attention. So let’s just call it ‘risotto made with spelt barley instead of rice’. It requires less thinking. This is actually based on a GoodFood recipe, but it’s not very generous, and isn’t detailed enough (I think) for people who probably aren’t all that used to cooking with barley, so it’s taken me about 5 attempts to tweak and work this out to the point at which I’m happy to offer it to you to make. Don’t expect this to taste the same as risotto, which is a subtler texture, but this is really tasty in its own right, and the texture of properly cooked barley is actually really satisfying, sort of the same feeling as mushrooms, now I think about it. Anyway, give it a go, spelt is cheap and proper good for you. Nice ‘good’ carb replacement for the ‘bad’ kind, too. Vegan if you replace all the creme fraiche with soya cream.

The only thing to mention before we start: soak the barley, that’s the key. Seriously, this makes all the difference. Chuck some water over it as you slosh milk over your cereal and leave it until dinner. I’ve always shied away from prep before you actually cook but this isn’t prep, it’s watering some grain. It makes the stuff edible. Please do it. You don’t need to make the same mistakes I did.

Prep time: 10 mins (1 of which happens a few hours in advance) | Cook time: 35 mins | Serves: 2
Nutritional info: 297kcal 45g carbs 18g fat 12g protein

Ingredients pic:

First off, at least an hour before, and ideally in the morning, chuck some cold water over the pearled spelt. It will eventually look like this:

Then before everything else, pour boiling water over the porcini mushrooms and allow to rehydrate

meanwhile, prep all the veg. Then heat the oil over a medium heat, and add the onion and garlic and soften for 5 minutes or so.

Then add the mushrooms, and cook stirring often for 2-5 minutes more.

Then, drain the barley, and add to the mushrooms, stir for half a minute or so, then add the wine, stirring as it reduces

quickly pick out the porcini from the soaking liquid, and add 50ml or so to the mushrooms/spelt. Add more of this to taste along with the stock (next bit) if you like.

Then chop the porcini and add to the mix

Then, like you would with a regular risotto, add the hot stock in batches until it’s all been absorbed

Season, if needed. Then add the creme fraiche and a splash of soya cream (or just about 80ml pp soya cream if you’re vegan), then 2/3 of your chopped chives, stir through, serve.

garnish with the rest of the chives, and maybe a bit of veggie parmesan if you want. (Not included in nutritional info)

Leek, squash and gorgonzola risotto,

hannahnicklin — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:19:41 +0000

I love risotto. Such an ace opportunity to take a basic set up and put together loads of different variations on flavours. This one’s unorthodox in containing NO ONION, which would be good for my mate Lucy who’s both gluten intolerant and allergic to onions. I know you’re glad I told you that. This’un’s from the Vegetarian Student Cookbook. I’m not 100% which one, but it’s definitely the one I’ve got, so if you really want to know, I will go and dig it out off the shelf. On the basis that you probably don’t care, though, for now I’ll leave it.

As for alterations, I parboiled the squash really briefly before roasting because I was lazy and wanted this to be a quick dinner. I also added a splash of white wine before adding stock, and as a mid-cooking thought picked some sage and chucked that in (chopped). Seemed to work. Will try it without tomorrow and if it’s better (because competing strong flavours isn’t always the best thing) I’ll edit with that info. For now:

Prep time: 5 mins | Cook time: 30-35 mins | Serves: 2
Nutritional info: (without added wine, and gorging inappropriately on additional gorgonzola while cooking): 470 kcal, 81g carbs, 12g fat, 11g protein

Ingredients pic:

Chop/peel/cube the squash, pop in a roasting tin with the oil, season and shake to coat well. Roast on a high heat (I dunno, about 200’c, I didn’t really look) for 30 minutes.

meanwhile… melt the butter in a pan, add the leeks and garlic, and cook for 5 minutes or so, until the leek has softened. Get the stock on the boil.

Add the risotto rice, stir until coated in the butter and cook for about a minute before chucking in (if using) the wine, then once that’s been absorbed/evaporated, start doing that with batches of the stock.

This is where I actually added the sage, but if I were you, I’d add it when you’re softening the leek, FYI.

Once the risotto is al dente (soft, with a tiny bit of bite) add the roasted squash and gorgonzola, stir well until the cheese has melted, and serve immediately.

Drizzle oil if you’re feeling posh/happy to consume an additional 50-100 kcal.

Seasonal Vegan Green Risotto

hannahnicklin — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:22:18 +0000

So I’m always making lovely creamy risottos on here with liberal amounts of creme fraiche or brie or butter or parmesan and although you can probably find replacements for those things, I thought I should make (and try!) a proper meant-to-be-vegan one. So here it is, and doubly well meaning with stupidly seasonal broad beans and herbs cut from my over-grown (and mostly dandelion and potato plant ridden) balcony garden. Although not in the ingredients or nutritional count I should also admit to having chucked a bit of soya cream in at the end, if you’re tracking nutrition 40ml or so should up it by 49kcal 2g carbs 4g fat 1g protein. Still pretty healthy, like. Based on a Rose Elliot recipe. So, here we go:

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Makes: 2
Nutritional Info: 462 kcal, 83g carbs, 5g fat, 10g protein

Ingredients: GREEN THINGS

soften the celery and onion in the olive oil

meanwhile, make up you stock, bring it to simmer, and boil the broad bean/s for 4-5 mins until just tender, remove and set aside

When the onion and celery is softened add the risotto rice and garlic, stir around for a minute, then add the wine and reduce until absorbed

Add the stock a bit at a time, stirring throughout until you’ve used all the stock or until the rice is tender, this should take 25-30 mins

Add the spinach, petit pois, chopped herbs, and broad beans, stir through until spinach is wilted, season and tip in a little soya cream if you fancy it.

Serve!

Pea and Brie risotto. Vegetarian, like.

hannahnicklin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Operating on what I think is a pretty sound ‘rhyming foodstuffs’ principle, I took the pea risotto recipe from the BBC GoodFood site, and added… brie! And it was lovely. So here’s the recipe. I should add that this rhyming foodstuff theory hasn’t been exhaustively tested. Or at all, really. Mind you, in trying to think of bad rhyming combinations of foodstuffs, I actually thought of loads of good ones. Bad ones probably exist though.

Anyway. This recipe is tasty, easy, and pretty filling. Go go picture recipe!

Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 40 mins | Servings: 2 | nutritional info: 423 kcals, 25g protein, 17g carbohydrate, 27 g fat.

Ingredients picture:

Puttings together: Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onion and gently heat for about 10 mins until really soft.

Meanwhile, put a third (50g if serving 2) of the peas into a food processor with a ladleful of stock and whizz until completely pureed

Stir the rice into the onion, increase heat to medium and sizzle the rice for 1 min.

Pour in the wine, then bubble and stir until completely absorbed.

Continue cooking like this, adding a ladleful of stock at a time, and stirring continuously until the rice is tender and has a good creamy consistency – about 20-30 mins. When it’s tender, stir in the puréed peas, remaining peas, (vegetarian) Parmesan, brie, and some seasoning

Stir until the cheese is all melty and awesome. Give the risotto a final stir, spoon onto plates and top with some pea shoots and a drizzle of olive oil, then a last twist or two of black pepper. Mmm…

Decidedly un-vegan Asparagus Risotto

hannahnicklin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:39:00 +0000

I’ve been hovering around the ‘vegan’ section of my new recipes recently, but today felt like something a bit creamy, with (well needed) rain outside, it being chillier than recent days, and a day full of hard thinking-type stuff meant this seemed like a good recipe. That Bumper Veggie Cookbook again. And seasonal, too, it being Spring. Here we go.

Prep Time: 10 | Cook Time: 25 | Servings: 2
Nutritional info per serving: 374 kcal, 16g fat (10g sat), 47g carbs, 1.1g salt

Ingredients:

Doing things:

blanch the asparagus for 2-4 minutes in boiling salted water, drain just before tender (they’ll cook a little longer if you leave them hot after draining)

melt the butter, add the shallots and garlic and sautee until soft

stir in the rice, cook for 1-2 mins, then add the stock, bit by bit until the rice is tender. I’ve doubled the amount of liquid in this recipe because I always need at least double the stock they state. I don’t add any more stock cube, though, as it’s already salty enough with parmesan, etc. Maybe cooking a larger amount leads to less quick evaporation? Anyway, prep lots of watery stock, and use it until the rice is tender. Not really rocket science.

Add the mascarpone, half the parmesan and half the parsley.

Stir in the asparagus and remaining parsley/parmesan.

Garnish and serve. That picture again:

Inexpert wine recommendation: Have it with Chardonnay. Little Penguin is well nice, and would probably go with it.

FOOD. Mushroom Risotto

hannahnicklin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:05:00 +0000

I can’t remember where I got this recipe from. Probably my little book of 100 veggie dishes. And since @alexanderkelly’s pea risotto entrance to the blog, I kinda felt like I should up my game. Seriously, a wine recommendation. I can’t do that, but I can share an equally awesome-tasty quick veggie risotto with you. BE GRATEFUL.

Nutrition: 397 kcal, 13g protein, 60g carbs, 13g fat, 6g sat fat, 3g fibre, 1.22g salt

WHAT TO PUT IN IT (this feeds one person, multiply by number of people, like)

Start the stock off to boil, chop the onion and celery, slice the mushrooms, grate the cheese. put some oil in a pan on a medium hear, soften the onions and celery, DON’T let them brown. At this point I found some porcini mushrooms in the cupboard (yeah… I’m that person) I put these in the stock to absorb some moisture and make it extra tasty.

When onions and celery are soft, turn up the heat high, and add the general splash of wine. ACTION PHOTO:

simmer away the wine until it has been absorbed by the rice. Then all you have to do is keep on adding a bit of stock, waiting for it to absorb, adding a bit more and stirring throughout like your life depends on it. Keep on adding and tasting the rice until it’s just between chewy and soft, add a last bit of stock, and the chopped mushrooms.

Last bit now, add the scoop of butter, a generous twist of pepper, and a handful of cheese.

keep stirring until it’s really sticky and gooey and lovely. Serve, scrunch a bit more pepper, garnish with rocket and a tiny bit more cheese. Serve. Bask in the glorious compliments of all to whom you serve it.

Pea and Parmesan Risotto

alexanderkelly — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:12:00 +0000

This is my favourite risotto ever. Which means I’m now a bit lazy about trying out other risottos, so it’s perhaps not challenged for its ‘favourite’ title often enough.

Its from Madhur Jaffrey’s brilliant World Vegetarian, with a few tweaks (mainly More Parmesan).
Serves 4 (or, actually, 3).

Weigh out the peas to let them start to defrost. Run them under the tap if you like.
Warm the oil in a large frying pan or risotto pan. Soften the onion in it for 5 minutes.

Add the rice to the pan, stir-fry it for 3 – 4 minutes.

Ladle in some stock. If I’m not trying to do other things in the kitchen – or dicking about on Twitter – I do this gradually, one ladle of stock at a time, stirring frequently until it’s absorbed, then adding more. If there are other things to do (like write up a recipe for a blog) I ladle in a lot of stock all at once.

After 15 minutes, add the peas and the remainder of the stock. Simmer and stir for another 10 minutes (or longer) until all of the stock is absorbed. I don’t like risotto to be too runny, but of course that’s personal taste…

Added the chopped parsley, the butter and the parmesan. Stir it in until it is all melted / absorbed / mixed.

Serve with a bit of extra parmesan on top, ground black pepper, and if you want to be all Masterchef about it, a couple of sprigs of parsley:

Serve with green salad, hot ciabatta and a glass of red Alentejo wine (optional).