The Ragdale Hall Dining Experience

A few months ago I went to Ragdale Hall in Leicestershire with three friends for a spa break.  Their philosophy is "Healthy food tasting good" - and it certainly did!  My friends bought me the Ragdale recipe book while we were there so I could attempt to recreate some of the experience at home.  The breakfasts, served in your room on a tray, and actually onto your lap while still in bed if you wanted, were amazing!  Lunch and dinner were both three course extravaganzas - though the portion sizes were small, you were always full afterwards - possibly because you don't use up that many calories on a spa break as most of the time is spent relaxing!  I did do one class of fitness yoga, but on the whole chilling out was the order of the day.

 

 

The breakfast choices were given to us pretty much as soon as we arrived, while relaxing with a cup of tea in the garden room.  There was a list divided into categories, where you could choose one item from each section - juices, smoothies, hot drinks, dairy, protein etc...  There were things you would never be bothered to make for yourself for breakfast - such as smoked salmon crostini, warm emmenthal and tomato wrap, maple syrup porridge with berry compote, granola parfait, pots of fruit tea, fruit salad... you get the idea!

The lunch, eaten in your robe in fabulous wood-panelled and chandeliered surroundings, took the form of starter and dessert served to your table, and a buffet style main course where you could eat as much as you liked. Examples of starters: chicken and pork roulade with vegetable marmalade; caramelised onion and stilton tart; and pea soup.  The buffet main course was nothing short of truly magnificent. There were olives, salads, cold meat and fish, hot dishes and all manner of side dishes.  Here follows but a small part of what was on offer. Lemon and lime chicken. Sliced cold belly of pork with beetroot and horseradish puree. Marinated tofu - the best tofu ever - it can be quite hard to make tofu taste of anything at all but this was so delicious that I had three helpings. Harissa marinated salmon.  Baby roast potatoes. Hot roast beef and little Yorkshire puds. Thai chicken curry.  Potato salad.  Hot piri piri chicken.  Seared tuna.
Dessert choices included lemon meringue pie, rhubarb crumble with crème anglaise served separately in a little jug on the side, and a silky vanilla panna cotta with chocolate decoration and a raspberry on top.  It was also perfectly acceptable to have wine at lunchtime, provided you were not mad enough to want to be exercising in the afternoon. There is a limit of one bottle of wine per person!  It was so decadent to be drinking pink fizz in your dressing gown in the middle of the day.

 

The dinners were similar to the lunches with the exception of the main course being served to your table and not buffet style.  We tended to get dressed for dinner, although it was fine to still be in your robe if you wanted.  Starters such as breasola with fig compote and salad; roast asparagus; and lentil soup went down a treat.  Mains on offer included fillet of beef; mackerel with pea shoots; and bream with caper sauce. Sides to accompany were shared between the four of us on the table so we could have some of everything. Diced potato with tomato, mange tout, rocket and cucumber salad with yogurt dressing; couscous.

Desserts were similar to those at lunch time, small portion sizes but that was just what you wanted - a rich chocolate brownie with ice cream; mint crème brulee with chocolate biscotti; or a cheese platter.

 

After dinner the chef sometimes came out to talk to you and he was happy to accept constructive criticism (such as the crème brulee didn't have a crunchy enough topping).

At the end of the meal a hot drink was served in the lounge, verandah bar or garden room, and I usually had peppermint tea for the digestion!

 

A fair bit of champagne and chocolate was consumed too over the course of the weekend, and the post spa break glow lasted a very long time.  As did the pedicures.

 

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Caroline :-)

 

Food and wine matching - part 1.

"Good wines if you can afford 'em, tra la la la la la la la, will soon do away with boredom, tra la la la la la la!" Or so go to the words to the champagne chorus in the opera "Die Fledermaus" - in which I will be singing the part of Ida next February.

Recently the husband and I decided that life's too short to drink bad wine, and no longer were we prepared to slum it with three for a tenner deals.  For some (who know who they are) life's too short to drink any wine, but that's not for me to discuss here...  We would much rather have something of higher quality and less of it, a bit like our attitude to meat.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I was one of ten lucky people on Facebook, out of over two thousand commenting no less, who were chosen to be wine reviewers for  Asda, specifically for their extra special Barbera as featured in a recent TV advert. The idea was to like the post, and add a comment stating why you would like to be an Asda wine taster.  Not thinking in the slightest that I'd be successful, but at the same time that you had to be in it to win it, I posted the following comment:

"Hubby and I would love to be tasters please.  We are loyal Asda shoppers and regular red wine drinkers. I also write a food blog and I'm planning a post on matching wines with food. :-)"

 

A bit of creeping, I said "please" and insinuated I'd be sharing it, and sort of promised them some publicity, so I hoped I might get picked. I had forgotten all about it until about a week later when a message arrived from Asda asking for my address and phone number so they could deliver me six bottles, and it arrived a few days later.  Three different reds and three different whites - and all that was asked of me was to comment on them on social media including the hashtag #asdawine.

 

 

 

The first one we tried was a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon Valle de Colchagua 2011. We don't usually go for a Cabernet as they tend to have a lot of tannin and are better with food than on their own, but this was very smooth. We had it to accompany roast gammon with clementines and ginger, plus the remains of the bottle the next day with a vegetable pizza.

 

The next one we had was Spanish. Old vine garnacha 2012, another red.  We paired it with a Spanish dish of poached chicken breast and cavolo nero (black kale) on a bed of butter beans and chorizo with some of the poaching liquid, and sprinkled with smoked paprika. It also went well with a pistachio praline in dark chocolate that I had afterwards by way of a mini pudding. 

 

The third bottle was a white - Chilean again - Sauvignon Blanc Romeral Vineyard 2012.  Hubby said it was the tastiest white wine he had ever had.  It was very floral and recommended with Thai food.  A friend had given us some home made Thai curry paste she had made and I was looking forward to trying it out so after discussion we went for a prawn curry.  I found the recipe on the BBC Good Food website and tweaked it a bit.  Basically you soften onion and grated root ginger in some oil, then add the curry paste followed by a sachet of creamed coconut and a tin of chopped tomatoes.  I added some chopped fresh tomatoes too as they needed using up and it worked very well, making the dish extra fresh tasting.  Then the prawns went in, I happened to have cooked ones so I just heated them through in the sauce, though the recipe stated raw ones and cook for longer.  Served with fragrant rice and a sprinkling of coriander leaves, it was hugely successful, mainly due to the fabulousness of the curry paste, better than any jar!  It was deemed to be the best curry I have ever made.  The wine matched it perfectly, standing up well to the chilli heat.

 

 

My wine and food pairings were partly guided by Asda Master of Wine Philippa Carr's recommendations on the back of the bottle, and partly due to general wine knowledge gained from my Dad over the years, and from reading "Jancis Robinson's Wine Course" ages ago.  I'm no expert,  but I've been to a couple of tastings run by a local company, and like to think I know a bit about wine.  Sometimes it's not about whether to have red or white or rose with a dish, but about how full bodied the wine is and how strongly flavoured the food is.  I'm looking forward to tasting the other three bottles, including the Barbera, and they'll be discussed in part 2 of this blog post.

 

In case you're wondering, all the wines retailed at £5 a bottle, though I noticed in store that that was the rollback price and the full price of the Garnacha was £8-something.

 

A few days later I won another prize on Facebook - a  Lurpak tea towel!  One of twenty lucky winners picked out of about 750 commenting on a post about favourite soups.  I wonder what the third thing will be?  Remember - you've got to be in it to win it!

 

Thanks for reading, lots more planned, and I won't leave it so long next time.

 

Caroline x

 

#asdawine

Adventures in pasta-making.

I've recently had a birthday, and my lovely husband bought me the present I really wanted: the pasta roller and cutter attachments for my kitchen aid mixer.  Pasta has been around since 1154 and for years I've been wanting to have a go at making my own, but never got around to it.  According to Wikipedia Italians eat sixty pounds in weight of pasta per person per year, and they have to import wheat to make it as their individual consumption exceeds the average production of wheat in the country.

The kitchen aid attachment is fab because there's no turning handles, the rollers turn automatically at a speed set by you, and you have both hands free to manoeuvre the dough, which makes it so much easier. Another bonus is that it comes with two cutting attachments for spaghetti and fettucine (it says tagliatelle on the box but the word fettucine is actually etched into the metal - anyway one is just a slightly bigger version of the other) - so you can almost effortlessly create perfect spaghetti or ribbons of pasta which would be tricky by hand.

There is also a ravioli maker but that costs a whopping £90 extra so I think when I try that it'll be hand crafted...

The attachment - attached!

Close up of the rollers.

 Feeding the dough through, to knead and thin it.

The cutting attachment...

The finished dish: fettucine with salmon, asparagus and peas in a crème fraiche, lemon and dill sauce.  The hubby's verdict: "I'm never eating dried pasta again!"

 

 

You get an idea of the process from the photos, but I need to go back to the beginning of the story.....

  

The first thing you need to make pasta is the right kind of flour, you can't just use bog standard SmartPrice Plain flour.  It took a bit of hunting down but I got there in the end.  I was hopeful that I would find it in our large local supermarket, and at first I thought they didn't have any.  So I phoned my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are pasta pros and make it all the time to find out where they source their flour.  It turned out they bought it from Carluccio's and they kindly offered to get me some the next time they get some for themselves, together with some semolina flour which is apparently great for dusting the finished pasta with before cooking to give the correct "bite".  However, I wanted to get started that very day as I had promised the family fresh pasta for dinner so I rang two other  nearby supermarkets who did stock it but didn't happen to have any in at the moment.  Disappointed, I had one more look at the flour section and hiding at the bottom, at the back, and happily on special offer too I found "00 Grade Premium Plain Flour" and in smaller writing "suitable for pastry, sauces and pasta"!!  00 grade flour uses the purest, whitest, central part of the wheat (or so the packet says).  The resulting flour is incredibly silky and white and blends more easily with fats and liquid than other flours. I was very happy and hot footed it home to start experimenting. 

 

 

 

Although you can make the dough easily enough just on the worktop and knead it by hand, I thought as I did have a mixer why not make use of it?  So I followed the instructions and mixed the flour and eggs with the flat beater, changed to the dough hook and kneaded for two minutes, then another two minutes by hand.  Then it needs to chill and rest for a bit.  The kitchen aid recipe book said one hour, the kitchen aid instructions for the pasta attachment said 20 minutes, the sister-in-law said it's supposed to be ten but a couple will do!  I can't remember what we did in the end but it wasn't very long.  Then came the fun part.

 

The dough was divided into three portions to make it easier to handle, then flattened out with a rolling pin before feeding it through the rollers with the mixer on speed 2.  The rollers start out quite far apart and as you feed it through more and more times you adjust the rollers (easily, no faffing about) from setting 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5.  The dough gets passed through several times (between 5 and ten times on each setting, folding in half each time until you get to setting 5), ending up with really thin pasta ready for cutting with the other attachment(s).  This may seem like a bit of a palaver but actually it's fast and fun without having to turn a handle! After cutting you can dry it but if you're going to cook it straight away there's no need.  I found when dropped into salted water at a rolling boil it took about 5 minutes to cook, I'm sure it depends on the size and thickness of the pasta and how "al dente" you like it as I know people who only cook fresh pasta for 45 seconds.

 

So - my first attempt at pasta was a success, and my daughter enjoyed it too, so much so that she wants to make us fresh pasta for dinner when we come home form work!  Yes please. 

 

I think there's a lot of conflicting information out there, and I've got a lot to learn and a lot of experimenting to do - the aforementioned brother-in-law and sister-in-law have given me tips already, such as using a pizza wheel to cut it up, and putting garlic oil in the water, but I'm sure there will be a "further adventures in pasta-making" blog post in the future.  I want to use some really good free range eggs (there's a lady at work who sells them from her chickens) to get a better yellow colour, for example. I'd also like to experiment with adding other ingredients to the mixture, making ravioli and tortelloni etc. Also need to get the portion sizes sorted, we used 300g flour and 3 eggs between four of us and there wasn't any left, maybe we were just keen for the first ever helping...

 

Thank you for reading.  Feel free to comment, or share this blog with anyone who you think might like to read it.

 

Caroline x



 

A passion for fruit (Part 2)

Ok, so at the end of the last post I had gooseberries and blackcurrants to use up.  A friend told me about her Mum's gooseberry flan with German "biscuit pastry" so I thought I'd have a go at that.  The biscuit pastry was made in an entirely different way to any pastry I'd made before, and it used vanilla sugar which I liked the sound of.  You stir the dry ingredients together, add milk, then cut the cold fat onto it and knead together.  Maybe I was doing it wrong but I found the end result a bit dry and crumbly and tricky to roll out.  I did manage to get it into the tin eventually, but some of it went in jigsaw puzzle fashion.  The recipe said to roll out a long sausage and put it around the edges, but it was too dry for this so I just squashed the remains of the pastry into the sides of the tin and blind baked it.  Then I added the gooseberries (stewed with sugar and the juice drained off) and glazed with the juice cooked with a bit more sugar and some cornflour to thicken in a pan.  I finished it with some blanched almonds I happened to have in the cupboard, gently toasted in the oven.

 

I liked the end result, but some family members would have preferred more sugar in the gooseberries, and I'm not sure I'd make the biscuit pastry again, I'll probably use the sweet pastry recipe made in the processor that I'm used to but substitute vanilla sugar.

 

As for the blackcurrants, I had found a recipe on the BBC food website for blackcurrant and mint sorbet.  I had all the ingredients, including plenty of mint growing in the garden and liquid glucose in the cupboard.  I started by making a sugar syrup and steeping a big handful of mint leaves in it.  When it was cool I discarded the mint and cooked the blackcurrants in the syrup with liquid glucose, which stops the formation of too many ice crystals, good for someone like me who doesn't have an ice cream maker.  When soft, the fruit was whizzed in the processor then pushed through a metal sieve to get rid of the pips.  The juice of two lemons was added and the mixture allowed to cool.  Then I froze it in a lunchbox, giving it a mash with a potato masher two or three times over a few hours.  And that was it.  Most refreshing.

Another fruity recipe I've made only this morning was a raspberry variation on a lemon meringue pie.  I thought, just for once and for an experiment, I'd do something I'd never done before and use a pre made pastry case, bought from the supermarket.  I wasn't holding out too much hope, as it's best before date was December (can pastry really keep that long?) and the ingredients list revealed it was made with margarine which I am not a fan of, but to be honest it wasn't that bad.

The raspberry mixture was made by pureeing the raspberries, again using the sieve to de pip them, and mixing with melted butter, sugar, 3 whole eggs and 2 extra yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  I was cursing myself as I tried to separate the eggs and kept getting bits of yolk in the whites reserved for the meringue topping... I put them in the fridge for scrambled egg later.  The raspberry mixture took ages to thicken, I hate recipes that say "cook until thick" without giving you any idea if that will take 45 seconds or 45 minutes!  I made notes for this blog with the other hand while I was stirring it!!  Eventually it did thicken and was poured into the pastry case and cooked for 15 minutes.  This led me to a other downside of the bought pastry case.  Not big enough!!  So I poured the rest of the mixture into a cereal bowl to make a smaller pastry free version (suitable for coeliacs!!) Then the egg whites were whisked with sugar and cream of tartar to make the meringue which was blobbed on top, styled with a palette knife and baked for another ten minutes.  And the end result was a good four and a half out of five, probably would have been a five with home made pastry.  I wonder if anyone else has had warm raspberry meringue pie for breakfast?

 

 

I've just discovered dropbox.  It's one of those things, like the amazon cloud player, that everyone else has probably been using for ages but I've only just found out about.  It makes adding photos to my blog so easy, take with phone or upload from camera and ping! they are on all computers including my netbook so wherever I am, I can find them easily.  Genius.

 

I'm going to Wales on holiday in a few days, so hoping to have some delicious Welsh foodie experiences.  More posts soon.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Caroline :-)

 

A passion for fruit (Part 1)

The title of this post is slightly misleading, as I haven't really got a huge passion for fruit, in fact I prefer vegetables.  However, at a recent "over 40s health check" at my GP surgery, the nurse told me that many people make up their five a day with mainly fruit and not many vegetables, and that this can be a problem, as fruit is higher in natural sugars, leading to obesity and so on. Fruit is also generally lower in fibre, iron, calcium, folate and some vitamins compared to veg.

Having said all that, I do like fruit, but more so when not just eaten as it comes but transformed into something a bit more interesting.  This week I have been to my parents house and picked gooseberries, blackcurrants and raspberries, and needed to discover something to do with them.

The raspberries were eaten by the kids, and added to my breakfast cereal and yogurt.  The gooseberries and blackcurrants were partly used to make a Nigel Slater recipe: gooseberry and blackcurrant crumble cake.  He suggested a few fruits that would work, including these two, but his final version was made with just gooseberries.  I decided to use half and half gooseberries/blackcurrants.  You make a sponge with ground almonds in, and before cooking it top with a layer of fruit and a layer of crumble mixture.  It worked fairly well, but was a bit overdone around the edges, I think it would have benefitted by having some brown paper tied around the outside of the tin with string, like I do with Christmas cakes.  It tasted good though with a cup of tea, once I had cut off the very outside edges. I might try it with cream later too.

The title of this post was also inspired by another recipe of Nigel Slater's that I discovered the other day - passion fruit creams.  Passion fruits are sometimes the fruit that nobody knows what to do with, and lots of people seem to not like them.  Maybe it's because they're a bit "perfumed", maybe it's because they have quite big seeds and you might not know whether to eat them, or they're a bit too crunchy.  It might be because people eat them under-ripe and not sweet enough.  You can tell when a passion fruit is ripe because its outer skin goes from smooth to dimpled like a golf ball.  I find it takes a good week after buying them from a supermarket for them to be properly ripe.  The first time I used passion fruit in a recipe was last year, when I made a passion fruit tart with coconut pastry, and also a lemon and passion fruit tart.  Since then I've used one together with strawberries and cream to fill a "Wimbledon Cake" - on the cover of Mary Berry's Baking Bible if anyone has that book - oh, and I had one on my weetabix, which worked really well, and that's about it, until today.

 A nearly ripe passion fruit.

The passion fruit creams were easy to make, you halve them and scoop out the seeds and pulp into a sieve over a jug, scraping as much of the juice and pulp through the sieve with a teaspoon, leaving the seeds behind.  This took rather a long time, and I hoped the end result would be worth it (and it was), but I got 100ml of juice from eight passion fruit, leaving a lot of seeds left behind.  Some of them got added back to the dish later, but most were composted, which seemed like a bit of a waste when they are edible, but while a few for a little bit of texture are nice, too many would have spoilt the finished dish.

Then you boil cream and sugar together for a few minutes, and add some lemon juice and some of the passion fruit juice, cool and pour into tiny espresso cups.  I bought some cups really cheaply on ebay ages ago and had been waiting for a recipe such as this to use them!  Then after putting a few seeds back into each one for texture and interest, and refrigerating for a few hours, they are served with more passion fruit juice poured on top, to mingle with the creams when you eat them.  My daughter and her friend have just tried one and they got the thumbs up.

You might have noticed the title says "Part 1".  Part 2 is going to be about what I do with the rest of the gooseberries and blackcurrants.  Any suggestions gratefully received!

To be continued...

Thank you for reading.

Caroline :-)

Spice up your life.

I've grown to like chillies more and more since I started this cooking thing... I will never like food as spicy as my husband, but I can stand the heat much more now than I used to.  Mum never used chilli in anything when I was young.  Curries used mild curry powder, and a chilli con carne was not spicy at all.  In total contrast, these days our house is full of assorted chilli based flavourings and condiments, and my husband and his brothers are on a non stop quest to discover the best chilli sauce.

Drowning everything in chilli sauce is sometimes, I feel, a little bit insulting to the cook, as it can drown out the other flavours and ruin a dish.  However, I've kind of got used to it.. perhaps the hubby's taste buds have been dulled by years of smoking...  I do agree that a little dip of it can really lift a dish, it works very well with oriental flavours like the twice cooked melting pork I made the other weekend, garnished with slices of raw red chilli and spring onions; it also works really well with cabbage, I've discovered.

I like Blue dragon sweet chilli sauce, it comes in mild, original and hot strengths. Also Riverford the vegbox people do a lovely organic one.  There's a company called Jules & Sharpie who make a hot pepper jelly, again in various strengths, and we bought it online in little plastic buckets!

The husband's favourite for quite some time though is the Flying Goose Brand from Sriracha - imported from Thailand and available in Asda, though only the one with the green lid.  The ones with the yellow and purple lids (see below) is the extra garlic versions and are extra delicious, they are available from other supermarkets (and via assorted brothers in law!) and online.

I have made my own "nam jim" thai chilli dipping sauce, we had it drizzled over ginger poached chicken and spring herb salad:

A friend of mine also made her own chilli sauce, which was successful, apart from the part where she tried to remove her contact lenses afterwards!  Ouch!  You do need to be aware that the juice doesn't wash off with soap and water so the zing will stay on your fingers for a good while afterwards, unless you use an astringent such a witch hazel or cold tea (only just found that out, and I'll be giving it a try soon).  I used to put my hand in a plastic bag when I chopped them, but I can't be bothered with that these days. 

Fresh chillies are good (green tend to be hotter than red) and there are so many varieties as anyone who has watched "Man vs Food" will know; but chilli flavour can also be added with dried chillies (whole or as flakes) cayenne pepper, etc. 

This blog post is not just about chillies, it's about spices and seasonings in general.  Over the years I've discovered many wierd and often wonderful things.. on holiday, on the internet (amazon and ebay mostly) and even in the supermarket when I wasn't looking for them.  Here is a photo of my spices and seasonings cupboard:

Having a good stock of things makes all the difference when planning meals, knowing you've got a selection of oils, spices and blends means that when you need it, it's there.  Of course over time they do lose their pungency, but they don't usually go off (except things with a high oil content like sesame seeds).  Mustard powder is a good staple, cumin (seeds and ground), coriander, garam masala, turmeric, star anise, nutmeg, fennel seeds, smoked paprika, cardamom... the list goes on.. On Facebook I once wrote a list of 100 essential storecupboard ingredients. The Old Bay Seasoning on the top shelf is imported from the USA and comes recommended by Nigella Lawson in one of her books in a recipe that I have made for deep fried squid.  A quote on their website states that there are two things you need to know about Old Bay Seasoning: 1. it's great on seafood and 2. it's great on everything else!!

Sometimes I grind my own spices after toasting in a pan to make my own curry pastes, sometimes I just mix the powders like an alchemist. Things I use a lot of such as cumin seeds come from Indian supermarkets via friends in a massive pack, and I refill the litle jars as required.  You can always adjust the recipe depending on how hot you want it.  And the husband can add a generous extra sprinkle of cayenne pepper to his portion...

This afternoon my son and I are on a mission to make shortbread dominoes, we will keep you updated.  Two blog posts in one day, that's a first for me.

Thanks for reading,

Caroline :-)

Risotto relaxation.

This week my teenage daughter has been seriously in my good books.  I came home from work on Wednesday to a delicious smell and she and her friend were halfway through making the seafood risotto I had planned for that night's meal.  I've mentioned risotto in my Meat Free Monday post, but I thought it deserved a post all of its own, because it is my all time favourite thing to cook. 

Lots of people think all that stirring is boring but I LOVE it, it's as if all the cares and stresses of the day melt away as the spatula goes round and round in the pan.  And as you usually have to add a glass of wine to it, it's only right to have a glass to sip whilst cooking it. I always find that it takes longer than it says in the recipe for it to be cooked properly, you have to keep on trying a few grains to see if that chalky texture has gone.  In the words of the wonderful Nigel Slater (reading his books always inspires me to write a blog post, and the following quote was actually referring to lamb shanks but I think it applies equally to risotto): "Of course, modern cooks demand a recipe that is done in the time it states, but.... we must enter a different mindset, one where something is done when it feels like it, not when a recipe says it should be."  I think it is the hob setting that influences it, the stock needs to be absorbed by the rice, rather than boiling so firecely that it just evaporates off.  On masterchef they always say that a risotto is an easy option, and doesn't show much skill, but the ones who do cook it always seem to get it wrong!

The first risotto I ever made was the classic risotto primavera, "the risotto of spring" with spinach, peas and asparagus.  I love spring and greens, so it was the ideal recipe for me.  Since then (OCD counting things alert!!) I've made another twenty five different risottos, pretty much all successful apart from the sausage, radicchio and red wine one which was a complete waste of the wine!  We ate the sausage out of it and the rest was consigned to the food waste bin.  The radicchio is just too bitter for all of our tastes, even when cooked in this way. 

Favourites have included broad bean & bacon; mint & prosciutto; salmon & mange tout; smoked fish with a poached egg on top; chorizo, squash & pea; asparagus & lemon, risotto nicoise with fresh tuna, green beans & black olives; leek, goats cheese & crispy bacon; prawn, squid & samphire and jerusalem artichoke with fennel seeds.

There is so much scope for variety, just soften a chopped onion and some garlic in butter, olive oil or a mixture of both, coat the rice with it until glistening, throw in a glass of wine or vermouth (and savour the most amazing smell!) add stock ladle by ladle as it becomes absorbed by the rice, plus your choice of whatever you fancy.  When done, add cheese, usually grated parmesan (unless it is a fish risotto), leave to stand for five minutes and serve.  I sometimes like to top it with something, such as in my favourite ever risotto, caramelised carrot.  Very simple, but when topped with homemade hazelnut and watercress pesto it is taken to a new dimension.

I don't seem to have many pictures of risotto - in a way they're not very photogenic, but here is the beetroot and gruyere one, which IS, as you can see:

This one is spinach and dolcelatte (not a great photo as taken with my old phone):

The better the stock, the better the risotto.  Home made is best, I once made a duck stock from a five spice roast duck and used the stock and the leftover meat in the risotto with soya beans for an oriental twist.  I always freeze chicken carcases when we have roast dinners and make stock with five at a time in a massive pan I got from Ikea.  When boiled the stock can be frozen and used at a later date. I also make stock with the Christmas turkey bones. If home made stock isn't available then I use Knorr stock pot, little jelly pots that you add to boiling water; or oxo liquid stock concentrate.  But at the end of the day you can always use cubes and it will be just fine.

What to do with leftovers has never been an issue for me as we never seem to have any!  But I know people who have made is into cakes and fried it, with or without a breadcrumb coating.  If you do want to reheat it, even the same evening, you will need to add some boiling water to loosen it up a bit. Nice when dipped in sweet chilli sauce.... the staple condiment which inspired my next blog post. I'm halfway through writing it and will publish soon.

Until then, thank you for reading,

Caroline :-)