We entertained for the first time in aaagggeeessss on Saturday night, and while the evening is fresh in my mind I'll share...fresh in that I remember dinner, after copious bottles of wine the rest is hazy. Marty needed to cook a vegetarian meal, and we had already decided on risotto, just not a flavour. Whatever we were having was to be followed by the famous brownies, served hot with vanilla ice-cream.
I didn't have any recipe books on hand, all of the ones at home were not Jamie's as SOMEONE had them all at work, so I got into a trusty app on the iPhone, Jamie's 20 Minute Meals. This is a great little paid app and probably even more perfect on the iPad. You're able to quickly and easily navigate recipes, with videos on how to do the most important aspects of the recipe, and can just as quickly add the ingredients to a shopping list. This shopping list can also be sent via email, so if you're not going to get to the grocery store the other half can do it on the way home. Enough about how great the app is, just go get it!
More importantly, the recipe - if you don't have the app or an "i_" to download it to.
Ingredients:
Serves 2
1 small courgette
1 small bunch fresh mint
1 x 125g ball buffalo mozzarella
1 small red onion
1 stick celery
1 knob butter
150g risotto rice
400ml vegetable stock
100ml white wine
1/2 medium fresh red chilli
25g Parmesan
olive oil
sea salt
black pepper, ground
How to:
1. Place a large saucepan on a low to medium heat. Peel the onion and trim the celery stick, then finely chop or coarsely grate them.
2. Add the butter to the hot pan with onion and celery, a splash of olive oil and a splash of water. Cook over a low heat for around 5minutes, stirring occasionally until softened. Meanwhile...
3. Trim the ends of the courgette then slice lengthways into quarters. Cut into chunks.
4. Bring the stock to the boil in a medium saucepan, then turn the heat down to low.
5. Pick the leaves off the mint stalks and put them to one side. Add the stalks to the saucepan of stock. Finely grate the Parmesan.
6. Once your vegetables are very soft, but not browned add the rice to the pan. Stir and fry the rice for a minute until translucent, then add the wine and keep stirring until the wine has been absorbed by the rice.
7. Turn the heat under the rice up to medium then add a ladleful of hot stock, avoiding the mint stalks - these are there to add flavour but not to be eaten! (Note from the chef - the heated stock is the key to a great risotto!)
8. Stir constantly and continue adding stock, a ladle at a time, waiting for the rice to soak it all up before adding the next ladleful. Continue until you've used 2/3 of the stock. Meanwhile...
9. Finely chop the mint leaves and the chilli. (Deseed the chilli if you don't like things too spicy.) Stir the chopped courgettes into the stock and keep adding it until the rice is just cooked and the risotto has a nice oozy consistency. If you run out of stock, use boiling water.
10. Take the pan of risotto off the heat. Tear the ball of mozzarella into pieces and stir into the pan with half of the chopped mint leaves.
11. Stir through half of your grated Parmesan. Taste the risotto and season well with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Cover with a lid.
Here's where we changed things a little bit. The recipe recommends to get you table set, then serve the risotto between the plates, top with the remaining Parmesan, mint, chilli and serve. We make it in our Le Creuset pot, which is not only the easiest option for cooking and cleaning, but looks great when presenting. Marty stirred in the rest of the Parmesan and mint and left a little to sprinkle on top, and served as such so we could all dig in. I served this with a simple garden salad.
On the side he also cooked up a chorizo sausage for the meat-eaters to add to theirs. The risotto on it's own was completely delicious and the chorizo added was divine too. So there are 2 options for you! That's about as step-by-step as you're going to get :)
We had some the next night for dinner as well and it was fantastic. Certainly a winner in our house that will be done again, changed slightly or not. It's one for the books, and I'll put it in my recipe journal so I always have it on hand.
Hope you enjoy it too!!
xoxo
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