Day 138: Asparagus and goat's cheese risotto

In my mind, I have always held risotto as being one of those recipes which would seem easy to make but is anything but. I had also seen Jamie Oliver on one of his cooking programmes making risotto and I think he referred to it, along the lines of being, labour intensive. For those reasons, I avoided making risotto. That is, of course, until this Challenge. Also, any time that I have eaten risotto in a restaurant, the rice is usually undercooked and the overall dish tastes rather bland. But therein lies another joy of being vegetarian – whatever one vegetarian recipe is on the menu, well, that’s what I’m going to have. Fortunately though, there are restaurants where I actually get a good choice but, usually, the vegetarian options are limited.

So, tonight’s recipe was Asparagus and goat’s cheese risotto and it was also a vegetarian dish so I summoned Dear Sister No.3 to the house as my independent taster. Well, there was no way that Dear Husband was going to like this recipe – or so I thought.

I began by sautéing a diced onion in olive oil on a low heat for about 6 minutes and then added the risotto rice and seasoning. I let it cook for a minute before adding in white wine and vegetable stock. On that note, I always use the reduced-salt Swiss vegetable bouillon which is MSG-free. Once it came up to the boil, I popped the lid on and into the oven it went for 8 minutes. At that point, I took it out and added in chopped asparagus spears which cooked for a further 9 minutes. Next, it was time to add frozen garden peas which cooked in the oven for another 2 minutes. Once the oven cooking part was over, I took the saucepan out and beat in a small bit of butter (Kerrygold, of course!) and grated parmesan cheese. Seeing as none of us actually like goat’s cheese, I used a few blobs of buffalo mozzarella instead and then added a sprinkling of black pepper.

The verdict…

Well, for the first time ever, Dear Husband scored a vegetarian recipe higher than what I did – 7 marks from him, 6 from me and 5 marks from Dear Sister. He said, and I quote “Aw, that was so tasty, so chickeny!”. Yes, for some reason, he thought there was some sort of chicken in it so I said nothing and never let on that it was actually a vegetarian recipe. To be honest, I only gave him a small bowl of it the first time because I’d made him lamb chops and salad for his dinner. However, I then went and gave him another helping seeing as he liked it so much. Dear Sister said it was ok (!). I’ll say nothing.

Overall, it was an easy recipe to make. I’ll definitely make it again as this recipe will be tucked safely up my sleeve for evenings when I really, really can’t be bothered to make two separate dinners. Oh, I almost forgot! Dear Son ate a full bowl of it!!! For that reason alone, I am going to make the risotto again for lunch on Sunday! Well, tomorrow is Friday and that can only mean one thing on the menu for Dear Husband's dinner - chicken tika masala...