Risotto revival

I hadn't made a risotto since May and it felt like it was time to cook it again.

 

The rest of my household are always quite enthusiastic about Andrew's risotto. They claim that this has nothing to do with the fact that you have to drink the rest of the bottle of wine with your meal (because 'otherwise it's a waste', and 'you know it won't keep'), but I am not so sure.

This time I tried a different variation: green vegetable (or risotto verde, if you want to sound fancy like I did). In my version, which serves 4, this was made with: 

300g arborio rice

1 small onion

1 large clove of garlic (it should have been more but, as I may have mentioned before, we are fairly wimpy about garlic)

olive oil and butter

75ml wine

1l vegetable stock (ideally it would have been slightly more, as the final texture wasn't quite fluid enough for my liking)

juice of 1 lemon (which was just starting to wither and needed using up)

150g pack of sugar snap peas

1/2 largeish courgette (home-grown, not by me)

rocket (whatever was left in the bag)

parmesan
12 cherry tomatoes (also home-grown, not by me)

I tried something new (to me) and whizzed the rocket in a blender with a bit of the hot stock. The result looked alarmingly like the kind of revolting savoury smoothie that someone much healthier and more more masochistic than me would drink for breakfast. (I didn't take a photo so you will have to imagine it.) But when stirred into the rice after the stock pan was empty the result looked reassuringly edible.

Stirring stuff. (Photo taken before the addition of the green gloop of doom)

 

I cooked the sugar snaps and chunks of courgette for a couple of minutes in the microwave before adding them to the rice at the end, just before the butter and parmesan.

For a garnish, I halved the cherry tomatoes and roasted them for about 10 minutes with a little oil.

Buon appetito!

Risotto verde