asparagus and feta risotto

I didn’t take a photo because, to be honest, I was exhausted from too much Wii Tennis in the heat! So you’ll have to be satisifed with a repeat of the asparagus photo.

I’m a big fan of risotto, although I must confess here to generally doing them in the oven as [whisper] Delia Smith taught me. Friends have insisted that these dishes are most emphatically not risotto, but should instead be described as oven baked rice dishes, which seems a bit purist, but there you go.

However, last night I did this the proper way, and here’s how:

This serves 2 fairly greedy people.

Finely chop a large shallot or two, and sauté in olive oil and butter over a low heat. Take a bunch of asparagus, trim off the woody bits, then chop into lengths of, oh maybe 2 cms, leaving the tips whole. Sling them in the pan and stir about for a bit.

Take 5 oz of arborio rice, and stir that in until the grains are coated.

Now you want 1 pint of liquid, made up as you like. I took the juice of a lemon, a goodly sloosh of vermouth (3-4 fl oz), and made it up with water, and added a pinch of the wonderful Marigold bouillon powder. Set that in a pan, bring it to the boil and keep it on a low simmer.

Now sloosh spoonfuls of hot stock into the rice mix, one at a time, stirring every time until the liquid becomes absorbed. It’ll probably take 20-25 minutes for this; it depends on the rice and the heat of the pan and so forth.

Then add as much feta cheese as seems reasonable, chopped into small cubes, and stir about until melted.

Pour into a bowl and devour.

Ours was followed by a nice mug of Assam tea, and banana muffins, but these aren’t essential. I suppose.

this week’s veg box

Lovely stuff - rhubarb, asparagus, melon, broccoli, bananas, orange, tomatoes, pointy cabbage, courgettes. From Riverford.

So:

• asparagus and lemon risotto
• rhubarb rumble
• indian cabbage with rice
• stir-fried broccoli
• courgette and pasta bake

We can have the melon, bananas and oranges for breakfast.

Yum!

lunchtime salad

upside down pear pudding

Peel core and quarter 3 or 4 pears - enough to cover the bottom of a 20cm/8 inch cake pan. I use a silicon one, but if not, grease it well, and I’d line it with baking parchment.

In a food processor, combine 175g of butter and 175g of caster sugar until fluffy and soft. Add 2 eggs, and blitz again, then add another egg, 175g of self raising flour, and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Pulse till combined.

Spread the mixture over the pears, and bake at gas mark 4 / 180° for 45-50 minutes. Leave to cool for about 5 minutes, then turn out on to a plate.

the endless sausage

This is actually perlmonger’s lunch: I loathe raw tomatoes, don’t care for strong cheddar (that’s unpasteurised organic there), and I’m not that fond of kabanos.

But I do always bite the end off his sossidge [fnaar].

broccoli stirfry

Another of those deceptively simple meals, which take less time than required to phone for a pizza.

Take some (lots?) of broccoli, remove the florets from the stems, and boil/simmer/steam for about seven minutes.  Drain.

Peel and chop some garlic - we like Lots, so we did about four fat cloves; you might not want so much (how odd).

This is important when you’re stir-frying - fetch out everything you might need before you start; it’s a swift process ad things can go pear-shaped before you blink.  So, for this one: tamari, sesame oil, oyster sauce, sesame seeds, the aforementioned broccoli.

And spring onions and red chilli, chopped up.

At some point in these proceedings, you’ll need a pan of boiling water and some noodles too.

Groundnut oil in a wok, heat, add garlic and sesame seeds; stir about a bit.  Add broccoli, pre-steamed.  Stir about some more.  Add a sloosh of oyster sauce, a sloosh of tamari.  Sort noodles - two minutes, how hard can it be?

Serve in bowls, scatter with chilli and spring onions.  If we’re being conservative, this took 25 minutes from starting to denude the broccoli.  Do you really want to buy convenience food?!

denuded

Who beheaded the broccoli?

moussaka

Last night was moussaka, loosely based on this recipe. Things are pretty much always loosely based on recipes here, depending on what we have and what we feel like eating.

I suspect adding a layer of spinach into the dish in between the meat and the aubergine is not authentic, but we had it, and it worked, so what the hell. I couldn’t be bothered to zest a lemon either - there was a half lemming clingfilmed in the fridge, so I chopped it into chunks and hurled it in, then fished it out again when the meat was cooked. We add some cumin too.

You’ll also note the celery and carrot - I usually start any sort of meat casserole-y thing with some diced veg like that, sometimes a courgette too if there’s one about. Sauté them down, and they add a richness and sweetness to the proceedings.

perlmonger got to do the aubergine frying for a change, and I supervised watched.

how to clean a wok

breakfast, before and after

Somehow, we have acquired a lot of fruit. We’re not good at eating it, and Riverford keep bringing it. We’ve been eating porridge for breakfast through the winter, mostly, but I think we must now attack the fruit backlog. Or possibly open a market stall.

And so - breakfast.