WWDH - Eggplant with tomato, basil and parmesan risotto

 

For Wednesdays with Donna Hay this week, Margaret chose eggplant with tomato, basil and parmesan risotto from New Food Fast.

This dish involves making a tomato risotto which is served atop pan fried slices of eggplant.  I served mine with some cottage cheese on the side.

I quite liked this dish - it was tasty, and it was very soothing stirring the risotto.

To see what Margaret, Chaya, Sarah and Kayte thought of this dish, visit their websites.

WWDH - Mushroom Risotto

This week, Kayte chose Mushroom Risotto from Modern Classics 1 as our Donna Hay recipe. You can also find it online here. I wasn't too sure about this one at first, as I can be a bit picky about risotto and in the distant past, I did have a bad experience with a gloggy pumpkin risotto.

However, this risotto was really tasty, and came together with ease.  The mushrooms really made it by adding "meat" and flavour.  I used Swiss brown and oyster mushrooms, but you can use whatever you have  on hand.  The recipe said to use dried porcini mushrooms as well, but I hate the taste, smell and texture of those, so I left them out.

To see what Kayte, Margaret, Chaya and Sarah thought of this week's dish, visit their websites.

Seven Fishes Feast - Prawn, saffron and tomato risotto

Joe of Italyville and Maryann of Finding La Dolce Vita are hosting a new event, the Seven Fishes Feast. As both Joe and Maryann are of Italian heritage, they are sharing one of their Italian traditions with us through this event. The feast of the seven fishes is an Italian tradition. Every Christmas Eve, "the vigil" is kept with the custom of dining on 7 fish dishes as Italians await the birth of the Saviour at midnight.

To participate in this event, Joe and Maryann have asked us to create a fish or shellfish dish and post about it by December 18 - simple. In addition to the joy of participating, there are prizes to be won, so get cooking!

As luck would have it, a lovely prawn, saffron and tomato risotto was on my menu, with the recipe featuring on p40 of the December 2008 issue of BBC Australian Good Food. Tomatoes and prawns together is a wonderful flavour combination, and I had some good quality red saffron threads from my blogging friend, Ivy, that I could use. I bought New Zealand prawns and lovely fresh vine-ripened tomatoes from Prahran market. This dish was delicious - slightly spicy, but not so much as to overwhelm the delicate flavour of the prawns. The hardest part about preparing the dish is de-heading and deveining the prawns - never my favourite job.

To make this tasty yet simple risotto, you will need:

4 cups chicken stock
1 pinch saffron threads
40g butter
2 chopped garlic cloves
1 chopped onion
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
2 diced fresh tomatoes
12 large cooked prawns, de-headed, peeled and deveined (but tails intact to make them "pretty")
1/2 cup chopped parsley

Heat the stock and saffron in a large suacepan; bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low, leaving the stock over the heat.

Melt the butter in a large frypan, then add the onion and garlic and cook until softened. Add the rice and cook for 1 minute, stirring all the while.

Add 1 cup of stock from the simmering saucepan to the rice, and stir it until the stock has been absorbed by the rice. Repeat untl all of the stock has been added and the rice is tender. Add the tomato to the rice, and cook for a further 3 minutes until the tomato is soft. Add the prawns and toss thorugh the rice, cooking until the prawns are heated through (if your prawns were purchased cooked and are therefore cold). If you bought green (uncooked) prawns, you will need to cook them before adding them to the risotto.

Divide the risotto evenly between 4 plates and sprinkle with parsley before serving.

Thanks to Joe and Maryann for hosting this fun event!

Baked chicken and pumpkin risotto

I love risotto, but have only previously tried to make it twice myself, both while I was living in London about five years ago. The first time, I made a spinach and pancetta risotto using a recipe from a magazine issued by UK Safeway (now defunct), and the results were pleasing. Buoyed by this result, I tried to make Jamie Oliver's butternut pumpkin risotto, with disastrous results. It took forever to cut up a whole butternut pumpkin as required by the recipe, with me fearing that I'd amputate my fingers the whole time, and the end result was such a gloggy, tasteless mess that it went straight into the bin. I have since been shy of making my own risotto.

However, I have recently seen numerous recipes for baked risotto, which eliminate the crucial but tedious task of assisting the rice to absorb liquid via the stove-top method. When I saw Emma's yummy looking baked chicken and pumpkin rissotto at The Laughing Gastronome (the recipe is here), I was enticed to try the culinary equivalent of bungy jumping and attempt to make risotto again - and I am glad that I did!




Doesn't this look fantastic! And it tasted just as good as it looks. The risotto is based on chicken stock, which gives it a nice flavour, and it worked even though I used rose wine instead of white wine as required by the recipe (hey, I didn't have any white!). I am also a fan of the juicy sweetness of japanese pumpkin, which makes me laugh considering that I wouldn't touch the stuff until I lived in a University college and had to eat it or starve.

This risotto is the perfect comfort food for a cold winter's night - I highly recommend giving it a go. And because it is baked, you just stick it in the oven and let it look after itself - no more tedious stirring and coaxing for the rice to absorb liquid on a stovetop. Brilliant!