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.

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.

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?!

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.

mushrooms with cumin, coriander and spinach

This recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian Cookery, an excellent tome.

It’s quick and simple to cook - served with basmati rice, it takes about 30 minutes from start to plate. And it’s delicious!

pumpkin and apple risotto

After the aforementioned trying day yesterday, we fancied something simple and easy for supper.

A rummage in the freezer brought forth a promising tub of mush, and so we had pumpkin and apple risotto. We make a lot of what I call risotto, but what purists would insist should be called an oven-baked rice dish, but for this one I do it properly, and stand over the stove, stirring (how alliterative).

Somehow, the ingredient list of pumpkin, apple, onion, garlic and parmesan doesn’t sound that promising, but trust me - it’s gorgeous, and a real comfort food, due to the lovely creamy texture.

The recipe doesn’t mention parsley, but I have a big bunch of flat leaf parsley, so bunged some in at the end.

Sunday supper

As previously noted, we picked up the first local asparagus of the year on Saturday; with it, we cooked one of our favourites - asparagus stir-fried with ginger and red chilli. It sounds a terrible thing to do to fresh asparagus, I know, but trust me … it really is glorious.

We followed this with a rhubarb and ginger sponge pudding - bit piggy, really, but it is Sunday. I discovered the wondrous combination of rhubarb and fresh ginger a couple of years ago; I was following a recipe that called for stem ginger in syrup, and I thought it would be too sweet, so lobbed some finely minced fresh in instead. We’ve never looked back!

If you don’t have any ginger in the house (and you *should*, of course) remember that elderflower works wonderfully well with rhubarb too, so a splash of elderflower cordial would make a very good substitute, although I’d cut the sugar down a little in that case.

Rhubarb is a Very Fine Thing indeed.

Sunday breakfast

Home made scones are lovely, but until I came across this recipe I was utterly unsuccessful at scones.

But now I’m not. Hurrah!

p.s. the dough freezes really well.

a quick supper

We’re working very hard at the moment, and don’t have a lot of time to cook, but that doesn’t mean we don’t cook! Last night was pasta bake with courgettes and tomatoes, which is as quick as it gets, and utterly gorgeous.