Chicken Risotto, revisited

So, Sunday's roast chicken  became yesterday's chicken with a cheese sauce (courtesy of Thermy), and today's second attempt at chicken risotto.

This time, I used Carnaroli rice, and more seasoning.  I followed (sort of) Quirky Cooking's recipe for Chicken and Mushroom Risotto. I say "sort of" because I only had about 90g of mushrooms,  I used 400g homemade chicken stock  and some tomato passata as part of the cooking liquid, and I used leftoevr chicken which I added in the final 5 minutes of cooking time. And I added grated parmesan at the end.

The texture was much, much better than the previous attempt.   I think that was partly down to rhe Carnaroli rice instead of Arborio. And partly because I put it in a serving dish for 5 minutes before serving.

The flavour was better, thanks to more seasoning and dry white wine (instead of the floral Gewurtztraminer from last time).

It was still a little lacking in seasoning, so next time I think I'll use even more chicken stock (and less water),  and/or I'll add a Knorr chicken stock pot, and/or more salt and pepper. I might also throw in some herbs.

But it was definitely a success, and I will use it again.

And I have leftovers to make risotto balls again.

Double yum!

http://quirkycooking.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/chicken-mushroom-risotto.html
More salt and pepper
More chicken stock (and/or stockpot and or maybe use soaked dried muchrooms and their liquor)
Herbs. Maybe mushroom ketchup or similar.

Yorskhire Puddings

We followed the recipe in the Fast and Easy cookbook.  I halved the quantity, and could see that there was a lot more liquid than we would normally use.  I decided to follow the recipe and see how it turned out.

It was OK... but I will reduce the liquid next time. I'll also use either buttermilk or milk and water.

Roast Chicken, again

We tried a different recipe this time, this time based on the "One chicken - 3 ways" recipe that I found online.

This was a much smaller chicken, and it fitted into the varoma properly.

The recipe said to stuff it, but I didn't.  Instead, I put half an onion, some tarragon, some thyme, some sage and some garlic butter in the cavity. I put a puece of garlic butter under the skin against each breast. Salt and pepper.

We steamed it for just over half an hour, then put it in the oven at 160 fan (180 equivalent), to brown. I'd already put the roasting tray in to warm up

We had one breast between us as part of a quick roast dinner.  We'll have the other one tomorrow in a cheese sauce, followed later in the week by risotto and then maybe risotto balls again.

I liked this method more than the other, and I will use it again.

Next time I will put some butter on the bird just before it goes into roast.

Courgette Bread

We have plenty of courgettes, so I thought i'd make this.

It's from one of Lesley Shapter's Bread Machine books.

I didn't have any buttermilk left, so I substituted ordinary milk with a bit of yoghurt mixed in. It didn't make much of a dent in the courgette pile.

Where did Thermy fit in?  I used thermy to grate the courgette.  It took all of five seconds to get super small chopped courgettes . (Obviously I had to rinse out Thermy afterwards, so possibly not much of a time saving - but certainly effort saving)

My breadmaker did a sterling job of making this while we went out for the evening.

Just had some for my breakfast.  If you didn't know it had courgette in it, you wouldn't guess it had courgette in it.  A lovely, light, multigrain loaf.

Except I put the breadmaker on the ordinary setting instead of the "raisin" setting.  So the multigrains are still sitting in the raisin dispenser.

Dips - Hummus, and Cucumber Raita

I made Hummus yesterday in Thermy, using a tin of chickpeas, a jar of out of data Tahini,  some lemon juice, some garlic.

I wasn't too sure about it. I don't really like the texture of hummus, always reminds me of baked beans (shudder).

Today, after 24 hours in the fridge, it wasn't bad at all.  MH liked it, which was a bit of a miracle.

I have a hummus recipe book on my kindle, and I think I'll try some alternative flavourings.

I'm wondering whether to buy more tahini, or whether to buy sesame seeds and  make my own.

Watch this space!


I also made cucumber raita.  I can't remember how long the instructions said to blitz for, it was seconds,  it was too long.  I had a kind of pulverized cucumber.

However, it worked surprisingly well.  I'll try mint and cucumber next time.

Well done Thermy!

Arancini

Today I made Arancini, or risotto balls.

I had these when out for lunch last Friday,  and I wanted to try them myself.  In fact, the reason we had risotto earlier in the week was so that I would have leftover risotto to make Arancini.

Cold risotto, shaped into balls, then flour-egg-breadcrumbed, and deep fried.

I should have added extra seasoning to the cold risotto, but they were still delicious.  I suspect they will become a staple second-risotto dish and will stretch our chicken for a further day.

Thermy didn'r help with this, but it did make the accompaniments.

More on that in a moment.

Coleslaw, revisited

I tried Coleslaw again today.

I used Delia's Four Star Slaw recipe (from her Christmas cookbook)  as a base.

I didn't have one of the "stars", celeriac, nor did I have any soured cream. Nor spring onions.  But, apart from that, I used her ingredients and proportions.

I halved her recipe and, with my substitutions, this is roughly what I did.

• Peeled about 150g of carrots, then cut them into 2 inch pieces.  I dropped these on the running blades at about speed 6 to make them a bit smaller.  They need to still be too big, as there will be further chopping shortly.  Scrape down bowl.
• Added about 150g of white cabbage, 
• Added half a stick of celery (cut into 1 inch pieces, should probably have done this with the carrot
• Added some red onion - I didn't weigh it, sorry
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tablespoon mayo
• 1 tablespoon natural yoghurt (I used greek style)
• A further 75g of yogurt to compensate for no soured cream
• 1 tablespoon oilive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard powder1/2 tablespoon cider apple vinegar (should have been white wine vinegar, but I picked up the wrong bottle)
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
• I added some parsley to enhance the colour
• salt and pepper.

I blitzed on speed 4 four about 6 seconds.

Lovely and fresh.  If you like your coleslaw a bit sweeter, I'd probably replace some of the yoghurt with mayonnaise.