Something For the Weekend

So usually I don't bother much with cocktails - they're great to drink and I'm a sucker for vodka slush in summer, but generally speaking they always seem like a bit too much effort to make.

However, during a recent flick through of one of my old Sainsbury's magazines I discovered an appealingly simple recipe for a 'Raspberry Sparkle' cocktail which, I decided, must be made. As per usual, I'm unable to just leave a recipe alone, so here's my version...

Ingredients (serves 1):
- 25ml raspberry vodka (or normal)
- 50g fresh raspberries
- juice of 1/4 lime
- ½ tbsp honey
- soda water
- sprig of rosemary, to serve (optional)

The thing with this recipe is that, as well as being easy, it's incredibly adaptable. For example, I love the flavour combination of blackberries and thyme, which would be a great Autumnal alternative. Also: I'm currently in possession of raspberry vodka, but it's so easy to make your own with ANY flavour, and the internet is full of recipes telling you how. So there is absolutely no excuse!

Method:
1. Grab a stick blender a blitz the raspberries, then use the back of the spoon to push it all through a sieve (I love raspberry seeds, but I don't want a drink full of them). If you don't have a stick blender, then with a little extra work just use the sieve and spoon - you'll get the same end result, it'll just take a little longer.
2. Mix your raspberry purée with the vodka, honey and lime juice.
3. Pour the mixture into a glass, add ice cubes (and a couple of frozen raspberries if you happen to have some), then top up with more soda water. Garnish with the rosemary and an extra raspberry or two if you don't have any frozen ones. 
4. Repeat as needed and get gloriously drunk in our new-found sun.
 

I Accidentally Bought Four and a Half Kilos of Carrots.

Yesterday my Tesco shop arrived and it contained three 1.5 kg bags of everyday value carrots. 

Moral of the story:

 If you're doing an online Tesco shop and you're buying vegetables and you choose "3" and add them to the basket, make sure you're buying individual vegetables and not multipack bags...

Also the lighting in my new kitchen is awful, so please excuse the photos...

Anyway, I had to find something to do with all of these carrots, so I made Carrot and Cider soup. This was an experimental recipe - I added things I thought would work as I was going along, and it turned out pretty well. I was impressed by the cider - usually for soups I use wine but this added an extra layer of flavour. Also this recipe makes a massive quantity because I have so many carrots to use up. This would probably feed about four people. If you have leftovers, just freeze them...

One note about the method - you need a hand blender. I recently bought one of these for myself and they're definitely worth having on hand for soups and smoothies. Soups are so cheap and simple that they make perfect student food. You chop the stuff up, you boil the stuff in stock, you add some flavouring and then you zap it with a hand blender. What could be simpler? And you can buy a hand blender for less than a fiver from Argos. Definitely worth the investment.

SO here's what you need for the soup:

1 onion

A knob of butter and a dash of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed/chopped finely

1.5kg of carrots (unprepared weight)

1 litre of stock (I used a vegetable oxo cube)

150ml cider

1tsp dried sage

1tsp paprika

The seeds from 3 Cardamom pods, finely crushed

Four or five basil leaves, shredded

Cream or yoghurt, and pumpkin seeds to serve

1. Peel and chop the onion into slices. Heat the oil and melt the butter in a large pan. Add the onion and garlic and soften for about five minutes. Add your cider to the pan, and let it reduce by about half.

2. Meanwhile, Top, tail and peel your carrots. Chop into slices and add these to the pan.

3. Cover with stock, and add the sage, cardamom and paprika. Let the soup simmer until the carrots have softened. Add a little more cider as it's cooking if you like.

4. When the carrots are soft, turn off the heat. Using a hand blender, whizz the soup until it's smooth. Add the shredded basil leaves, stir through thoroughly and serve with bread and a dollop of cream or yoghurt.

Smokey Red Risotto

If you've been reading this blog for more than five minutes, you'll know that Zosia and I have quite a thing for risotto, and we also like playing with recipes. Therefore we have posh risotto, gin risotto, red wine risotto and pink risotto among other things - and this is another new one.

It embodies everything you could want as the weather starts to get colder: it's smokey and warm and comforting, and fills your kitchen with the sweet scent of spice. I'll also be using it in future as a way of getting Zosia round for tea, because it's very odd not living with her this year and I miss her.

Ingredients (serves 6):
- 2 red onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2tsp dried basil
- 1tbsp smoked paprika
- 400g arborio rice
- 1 ½ tins chopped tomatoes
- 400ml red wine
- 1000ml vegetable stock
- 6 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
- bunch fresh basil, torn
- salt and pepper
- soft goats cheese, to serve

Method:
1. In a large pan or wok, cook the red onion and garlic with a knob of butter for about 8 minutes, until starting to colour. Add the dried basil and paprika and cook for another minute or so before adding the rice.
2. After another minute, add the chopped tomatoes, the red wine and a ladle-full of the stock and stir in. Bring to a simmer, and add more stock as the liquid is absorbed by the rice - this should take about half an hour. Stir it as often as you can.

Stirring fun: the reunited cookers

3. When it's almost done, stir in the sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil, and season to taste. Serve with the goats cheese and lots of garlic bread. If you have it, drizzle over a little garlic olive oil too, for an extra bit of yum.

Awesome. Also I should say that term has started again and the current amount of business is unreal. Seriously - yesterday I threw some pasta together and had to put it in a tupperware box to eat while I ran/was on campus. Also I have freshers' flu. So bear with us for a little while, while we find our feet again!

Oooh. Red Wine Risotto

Okay. I admit it. I really like cooking with alcohol.

I blame my mother. 

But this  risotto is pretty awesome. Normally, you make risotto with white wine, which is lovely and mellow. This risotto is made with red wine instead. I had this mad idea to make risotto with red wine a while ago. I googled it, and it turns out other people had the same idea. So I decided to just go for it, make up a recipe and see what happened. And what happened was pretty successful. The red wine becomes the dominant flavour, whereas normally the white wine tends to form the back drop to whichever other flavours you choose to add. And it went down well with the housemates, so yknow. I think it works.

I made this quite a while ago, but I think it serves about four people. We ate it with lots of Bryony's  excellent garlic bread.

What you need: 

1 Aubergine

Olive oil

Butter

3 Cloves of garlic

1 Leek

300g Risotto rice

1 Very large glass of red wine

2 Oxo cubes

1tsp Dried rosemary

1/2 tsp Mixed herbs

1/2 tsp Pesto

2 tsp Wholegrain mustard

1 handful of Parmesan cheese, grated

Fresh basil, chopped

Fresh parsley, chopped

Goats cheese to serve

And what to do:

1. Roast your aubergine. Chop it up into small pieces, place in a roasting tin and drizzle with olive oil. Stir it all around and place it in the oven at 180C. It'll take about half an hour to roast.

2. Chop the onion and the leek. Melt about 25g of butter in a large pan with some olive oil over a low heat, then add the onion and leek. Let it cook for about four minutes, then crush your garlic (or chop it up very finely) and add it to the pan for a further minute or so. Then add your risotto and stir it in to the onion/garlic/leek mix, coating it in butter and oil so it becomes shiny.

3. Now add the red wine and let it simmer and reduce. Once it has, you can either make up some stock with the oxo cubes and add this gradually, or just crumble the cubes into the risotto and gradually add hot water as youre going along. I tend to do the second, Bryony generally does the first but it's up to you.

4. Add your herbs and your pesto and your mustard, and stir it all through. Then let it all simmer as the rice cooks, adding more water or stock as it evaporates. 

5. After it's been cooking about half an hour, check on the aubergine, and once it's ready add to the risotto. 6. Keep stirring the risotto, and once the rice is cooked add the parmesan cheese and most of the chopped fresh herbs.

7. Serve sprinkled with goat's cheese and herbs, with garlic bread on the side.

Give it a go if you fancy something slightly different to "normal" risotto...

Red Wine and Onion Gravy

I came home from a long day of revising Gregorian papal reforms and the persecution of minorities in twelfth century Europe and discovered that all my boyfriend Alex had eaten that day was two slices of cake and two bags of crisps. What a balanced diet. Nonetheless, he was in need of a good square meal.

Onion and red wine gravy had been playing on my mind all day, and as I had two bags of veggie sausages in the freezer I figured bangers and mash with onion and red wine gravy was a plan. Turned out to be an incredibly good one.

Normally my mum makes an epic gravy involving most of a bottle of red wine, the better part of four hours and some Bisto onion gravy granules but I had neither the time nor the Bisto. SOO I did a variation on this gravy recipe from BBC Food instead.

This served two very hungry people after a long day of revision…

For the gravy:

1 onion (I used a red onion but a white onion would work just as well)

Large splash of olive oil

1 large (we’re talking really large) teaspoon of wholegrain mustard

Large glass of red wine
½ an oxo cube

½ pint of water plus two large table spoons, added if necessary to keep your gravy from burning

2 drops of maple syrup (you could use sugar. Or honey. This was just the first sweet thing I grabbed)

Pinch of fresh chopped rosemary

For an excessive quantity of mashed potatoes: (I had a hungry Alex to feed)

3 large potatoes (I used baking potatoes but you’re supposed to use floury potatoes)

75ml cream

Splash of milk

Large knob of butter

Salt and pepper

For the sausages:

four or five veggie sausages (two for a normal person (me) and three for Alex)

Olive oil to cook

Serve with plenty of peas.

1. Chop the onion in half, then cut it into slices so you have long strips of onion. Add to the pan with the olive oil. Cook for 7-10 minutes, until soft. Stir in the mustard, then add the red wine. Let it simmer. 

2. While your onion and wine are cooking, peel your potatoes and dice them into small cubes. This means they’ll cook faster. Boil in slightly salted water for 10-12 minutes.  

      

3. MEANWHILE, back to the gravy. When the red wine has reduced down a bit, add half an oxo cube, half a pint of water and the rosemary. Let it all simmer gently, and if it gets stuck to the sides of the pan or starts to look too sticky then add a more water.

4. Put your sausages in a frying pan with a little olive oil and fry them. My veggie ones took about ten minutes to cook, but it'll depend on whether you're using meating sausages or not.

5. When the potato is cooked (spear a bit with a fork and bite it, you’ll soon be able to tell if it’s done or not) drain off the water and prepare to MASH.  Put the potatoes back in the pan with the cream, the butter and a splash of milk. Mash to your heart’s content, til everything is all smooth and well combined.

     6. Serve your sausages and mash with peas and a liberal helping of gravy. Eat on the sofa while watching rubbish on television.

Disclaimer: This meal is ridiculously filling.

Happy Birthday To Us (now have a cocktail)

A year ago today, we sat in the kitchen and wrote about how much we were kicking ourselves for not having blogged sooner. Today, we've reached over 10,000 page views, have a facebook page and twitter account and 148 followers that we're aware of, as well as a recommendation from the Vegetarian Society. LIFE IS GOOD. Now have a cocktail.

My Dad and his partner Andy just got back from a spectacular holiday in Brazil, which seems to me to have mainly consisted of drinking alcohol on a beach. And in Brazil, they drink Caipirinhas. Like so.

The recipe is a bit rough, as it's word-of-mouth from Dad who got it from his Brazillian friend Benjamin, but here goes...

Ingredients: (per glass)

- 1 lime

- 1½ tbsp caster sugar

- 4/5 ice cubes

- enough cachaça to fill your glass 

Also, if you can't get cachaça I think the closest match would be white rum (though then it's technically called a Caipiríssima. Yeah).

1. Give the lime a good scrub, then cut into eight pieces. Then go and find the nearest thing you can to a pestle and mortar. I suggest a jug and the end of a rolling pin.

2. Add the sugar, and smush. That's a technical term. SMUSH IT GOOD. Then add the ice and smush some more. 

3. Add the cachaça and mix, then pour into a tumbler and voila! You can obviously adapt all the quantities depending on how you like it. There's a chance that I like it A LOT and so am currently a bit tipsy. But I am a student after all...

It Is Risotto O'Clock

Risotto was one of the first things I cooked at home independently. Mum doesn't have the patience for it so I'd only ever had it in restaurants, but it became something of a tradition that when Fraser came to stay, that was what we made. We even had a song (can you guess from the post title?).

In some ways this is an adaptation of a couple of my other recipes - the roasted butternut squash from one and all the leeky goodness from another, but in my opinion this just makes it the best of everything.

Ingredients: (serves 5)
- 1 medium/large butternut squash
- 50g butter
- 1 large onion
- 2 medium leeks
- 4 big cloves garlic
- 375g/15oz arborio rice
- 2 glasses white wine
- 1.5 litres vegetable stock
- between 50g-100g parmesan, to taste
- handful fresh parsley
- generous sprinkle dried rosemary
- salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1. Peel, chop and de-seed the butternut squash (if anyone has a method of doing this that takes less than half an hour then for the love of god please share it), and cut into rough cubes before placing in a baking dish.
2. Drizzle over some olive oil, then add the rosemary, some salt and pepper and one of the cloves of garlic (finely chopped). Give it a good stir and put into the oven at 220°C. You'll need to take it out and stir every 15 minutes or so, but it should take about the same time as the risotto. Awesomeness.

3. Chop the onion and leeks, and add to a large pan or wok along with half the butter. Then, grate the rest of the garlic and add that too. I don't know why but grating releases double the flavour and is sooooo good. Cook for about 10 minutes, 'til it's all soft and lovely and has shrunk down a bit.
4. Add the rice and cook for a couple more minutes, then tip in the wine and simmer. Once that's been absorbed, you can begin to add the stock, a ladle-full at a time, stirring continuously. The whole stock-adding process should take about 45 minutes with this amount.
5. Once all that's done, add the butternut squash (which should be done by then), the parmesan, the parsley and the rest of the butter. Season to taste, serve with plenty of garlic bread and ENJOY.

Also, do this with the leftovers. You're welcome.

Vegetable Chilli (the best you've ever tasted)

This chilli is so easy to make that it's really impossible to get it wrong - it just takes a bit of time. It feeds a whole bunch of people (about 6) so is great if you're having friends round, plus it freezes brilliantly. It's also packed with the things your parents always ask if you're eating enough of, like BEANS (look, Mum!), and what’s more, you can adapt it to whatever you fancy or just happen to have in the fridge - use different kinds beans or vegetables, or play around with the spices to vary it.

 

Because of the awesomeness I ended up making it two days in a row last week - first to feed my friends before a night out, and the second time because Fraser requested it when he came to stay. I'd made double quantity the first night (there were 9 of us) but my hopes of leftovers were in vain!

Ingredients: 

- 1 onion

- 2 peppers (yellow and red)

- 2 sticks celery
- 1 large carrot

- 2 cloves garlic

- 2 chillies (red and green)

- 300g Quorn mince

- 1tsp chilli powder

- 1½tsp ground cumin

- 1tsp ground coriander

- 2tsp cinnamon 

- 1tsp paprika

- 1 glass red wine

- 2x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

- 2x 400g tin kidney beans (or any you like)

- 200ml vegetable stock

- 1 bay leaf

- 30g fresh coriander

Method:
1. Heat some olive oil in a large pan or wok. Roughly chop the onion, peppers, celery, carrot, garlic and chillies and add to said pan, then cook for about 10 minutes, until softened and beginning to colour.

2. Add the Quorn mince (straight from frozen, but bash it a bit to break it up first) and cook for a few minutes until it's browned, then add the spices and cook for a further 5 minutes. This is the only point where you really have to watch it, or the spices will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

3. Stir in the tomatoes, red wine, bay leaf, vegetable stock and beans (drained), then give it a good stir to mix it all together. Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for about an hour, stirring every 10 minutes or so to make sure it isn't sticking.

4. Turn off the heat, then roughly chop the coriander and add it to the pan, along with salt and pepper to taste. You can serve it with basically anything - my favourite is in tortilla wraps with sour cream and a strong cheddar, but you could do it with rice and add chopped spring onions, or even just eat it by itself. The choice is yours! But do eat it - you're missing out until you do.

Chocolate-Orange Biscuit Bites: Guest Post by Jamie-Rose Duke

Hello all, this is Bryony and Zosia's friend Jamie-Rose Duke tip-tapping away here - hoping I can do their ace blog justice! 

If there's one thing I've learned throughout my near twenty years, it's that there's never a bad time to bake biscuits. Free fact of the day for you there. And over the Christmas holidays, not having had the comforts of my kitchen at home for three and a half months, I was keen to get my baking groove on. Now, as a bear of little brain and simple pleasures, such as myself, it didn't take me long to decide my main two ingredients: Chocolate (or cocoa, to be precise) and alcohol (or Cointreau, to be even more precise)

And you know what?

My chocolate-orange, crumbly biscuit bites turned out pretty damn well. And they're super easy to make!

You will need:

250 grams of soft butter

150 grams of caster sugar (although, light brown works just as well)

40 grams of cocoa powder

300 grams of plain flour

1/2 tsp. of bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp. of baking powder

The zest of 2 small oranges (or one large one) - be thorough with the zesting!

1 1/2 - 2 cap-fuls of Cointreau triple sec.

1. Make sure your oven is pre-heated to 170°C/ gas mark 3 (or around 150°C if you have a fan oven).

2. Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until it's soft and smooth (no lumps of butter still visible!).

3. Next, add the cocoa and once that's mixed in, the flour, bicard and baking powder - remembering to sieve it all first!

4. Add the orange zest, mix in, and then the two caps of Cointreau (if you're not keen on adding the alcohol, then just adding the juice of the orange(s) is just as wonderful - I'm just quite a fan of triple sec!).

The first two photos on this guest post were taken by the beautiful Miss Bryony Bowie herself :)

5. When the mixture is complete, it's time to roll it into balls and stick them well spaced on baking trays lined with parchment. The balls should be about the size of a walnut and you should be able to make anything from 24-30, all depending on the size you think walnuts are.

6. Before popping them in the oven, gently pat down each biscuit-to-be so they're about a centimetre and a half thick. (I like to gently imprint a fork on the top, just to be fancy) And when that's done, bung the trays into the oven for about 15 minutes - again, you can judge this time for yourself depending on how ferocious your oven is. 

7. When they come out, don't be surprised if they don't look quite done, they'll continue to cook as they cool - which you should let them do on a wire rack, when they're cool enough for you to remove from the baking tray.

8. ENJOY THE BISCUITY GOODNESS. 

This recipe is inspired by one of Nigella Lawson's. Just with a few added bits and bobs :)

Hangover Heaven: Eggy Bread

I handed in my last essay of term on Tuesday, and I feel more than due a good night out in celebration. Luckily there are two of those lined up for this week, but not-so-luckily they're one after the other. Plus, Fraser's coming to visit and will be here for the second one, so I need to be alive rather than wallowing in the hangover hell.

Solution: Eggy bread (or French toast, if you want to be fancy). And also tea. Lots of tea.

It couldn't be simpler really -
1. Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan. You can add some butter too, if you're feeling extravagant.
2. Grab some bread, it doesn't matter what sort, and slice it up.
3. Then in a bowl, beat together an egg per person, add a good dash of milk and season.
4. Soak your bread in the eggy mixture (flipping over so both sides get done), then transfer to the pan.
5. Cook for about 3-5 minutes and then turn over and cook for a few more. Both sides should be gorgeously dark gold and crunchy-looking.
6. When it's done, transfer to some kitchen towel and whap your next lot in the pan.

If you run out of mixture, just top it up with another egg and some more milk. Easy peasy.

Serve with ketchup, or, for an alternative, you could skip the peppering stage of making the mix, then once the bread's cooked serve it with a sprinkle of caster sugar and cinnamon. That one would go well with fruit, too.

And don't forget the tea.

And then I made vegetarian French onion soup and gluten free bread because I'm the best housemate ever.

Me again. Zosia's alive and cooking (see what I did there?), honest, but she's currently in Cheshire for Alex's Dad's wedding and is running around like a running-around-person being busy. Also her blogger may be broken. I'm not entirely sure but she promises to sort it all when she has time.

In the meantime, I'm doing more cooking than ever and loving it. And I'm particularly proud of this recipe.

As I mentioned last month in my apple pie post, Fraser took me to Paris in September. Cue being surrounded by endless beautiful food, but also feeling sad because I can't eat it. Being vegetarian sucks in France. I ended up having French onion soup a couple of times - anxiously asking the waiters if it was vegetarian, and being assured that it was - but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Ever since I discovered that the onion soup in a cafe at home was made with beef stock, I'm permanently suspicious. So, I decided that the only way to avoid this conflict and still get the yum-factor was to make my own.

Ingredients (serves 4):
- 50g butter
- 6 onions
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp caster sugar
- 3tbsp plain flour
- 1/2 cup white wine (approx 120ml)
- 1500ml veg stock
- 1tsp smooth French mustard
- approx 200g cheese - jarlsberg or gruyère (or a strong cheddar if you have none)

1. Begin by heating some olive oil in a large pot and then melting the butter. Chop the onions into strips, crush the garlic and add along with the salt.

2. Using a low-medium heat, these now need about 50 minutes to caramelise - thought you need to add the sugar after the first 15. Stir every 10 minutes or so, just to make sure everything gets an even blast at the heat and that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot and burns.

3. When the onions are soft and golden and you just can't stand waiting any longer, add the flour. Stir to coat and cook for about three minutes before adding the wine. Let this bubble, and use it to get all the bits off the bottom of the pot that got there stuck no matter how much you stirred (the chefs call this 'deglazing the pan').

4. Add the vegetable stock and mustard, and cook with the lid on for a further 40-50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so. Season to taste.

And as for the bread... 

This was the first time I'd made gluten-free bread, so I thought I'd keep it simple and follow the recipe on the back of the Dove's Farm gluten-free bread flour packet. It wasn't bad. And it probably would have worked better if we'd discovered at that point that the oven in our new house is a fan oven and so all the cooking times need to be altered. Also we don't have a bread tin so it was freestyle...

Don't judge me.

Despite its aesthetically-questionable appearance, it worked really well with the soup. Mix it all up before you start, then let it rise while the onions are doing their thing. Whap it in the oven about the time you add the flour and everything should be ready at about the same time.

5. To serve, slice up the bread and stick it under the grill for a couple of minutes until it's going hard. Then grate your cheese (I only had cheddar) and sprinkle over, before putting back under the grill. If you have posh oven-proof soup bowls you can put the bread and cheese in there, but I don't so I used my trusty baking tray and then transferred them. If you have any around then sprinkle with a little herb de provence for a finishing touch, and enjoy.

A Study in Pink

 

Advance warning: This is the most literary-related risotto recipe ever. It's also amazing and you should make it. Just don't blame me if you just can't handle the awesome that is PINK RISOTTO with roasted beetroot and butternut squash. Yes, I said pink risotto. Keep reading.

Ingredients (serves 4):
- 1 butternut squash
- 1 bunch raw beetroot 
- 5 cloves garlic
- 2 large onions (or 1 onion and 1 leek, if you fancy)
- large handful French beans - approx 150g
- 300g/12oz arborio risotto rice
- 2 glasses white wine
- 1500ml vegetable stock
- 10-12 sage leaves
- 10 sprigs thyme
- 125g block soft goats' cheese
- salt and pepper



1. Start by peeling the squash and beetroot. Chop the squash into small-ish chunks and the beetroot into slices, then peel and finely chop three of the garlic cloves. Put into an oven dish and toss with some olive oil, salt and pepper and five of the thyme sprigs (the only way I've ever been able to do fresh thyme is to pick the leaves off a few at a time, which is very annoying, but always worth it.). Also, be aware that after peeling and chopping the beetroot you WILL feel like Lady Macbeth:

'Out damned spot! Out, I say! ... What! Will these hands ne'er be clean?'

2. Stick into a preheated oven at 180°C for 45-60 minutes, taking out every 15 minutes to stir. And while those are roasting, you can start your basic risotto - olive oil in a large pan, melt some butter, chop onions and the remaining garlic and add, and then cook for approx 5 minutes until soft and starting to colour slightly. Add the French beans (topped, tailed and halved) and cook for another 5 minutes.

3. Add the risotto rice and stir to coat, then tip in the wine and let it bubble and reduce down for a few minutes. Begin adding the stock, about a ladle-full at a time, and stir LOTS. The stock-adding process should be finished at about the same time the roasting vegetables are.

4. When the stock is all added and the vegetables are done, add them to the pan. Stir in, then season, chop the sage and the rest of the thyme and add that too. Then add the whole block of goats' cheese. Yes, all of it. Trust me. While you're doing this the hob should be on a low heat, and you should still be stirring lots. Your risotto will then make the transition...

...and become pretty in pink.

5. When all the cheese is mixed in and there are no white streaks, serve to your impressed and astonished housemates. Also, the more you stir it the pinker it will get. Garnish with a couple more sprigs of thyme for prettiness, and enjoy. It's particularly good served with garlic bread.

Yes of course we have a sunflower in a Champagne bottle - doesn't every student house?

 Ps. Zosia would like me to add that she is alive and will post again soon, but that life is very crazy and at the moment she doesn't have time to cook and only has time to eat my food. She didn't say that last bit, but it's totally true. I should start charging.

Franklins Risotto

 

At the end of the street my Dad lives on in London there is a beautiful farm shop called Franklins, and across the road is their restaurant. Everything is organic and seasonal, and the majority of their produce is sourced locally. Sadly, this usually means that price-wise it's way out of the league of a poor student, but Zosia and Jamie had come to stay - and we had a plan. 

We envisaged creating a beautiful risotto full of things we could never usually justify buying, which we would then eat in the sunshine whilst pretending we were sitting outside a fancy restaurant. Or that may have just been me - but either way we were all excited.

The ingredients list is a bit vague as rather than weighing things out we just put in a bit of what we fancied, but you can really do whatever you like with it.
- 225g arborio risotto rice
- 1 large red onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- handful of chestnut mushrooms
- 2 tsp dried rosemary
- 1125ml of vegetable stock
- 6 spring onions (we only used 3, but they were HUGE)
- 2 handfuls of garden peas in pods
- large glass white wine
- 2 handfuls of fresh tarragon, chopped
- large handful of samphire
- large handful of rocket
- 100g goats' cheese

Start by shelling your peas. This takes ages but is very satisfying - and in our case Jamie was our chief-sheller while Zosia and I started on the risotto. THANKS JAMIE.

Melt some butter in a pan (with a teeny bit of olive oil first to stop it burning) while you chop the red onion and the garlic. Add them to the pan and let them soften for around 5 minutes while you wash and chop the mushrooms, then add those too along with the rosemary.

Organic vegetables are funny looking.

Once you've let that cook for about 2 minutes, add the rice and stir to coat, followed by the wine. Allow that to simmer and reduce down a little bit before starting to add the stock (about a ladle-full at a time) (the full stock-adding process should take around half an hour). Chop the spring onions, and after about half of the stock has been absorbed add them to the pan along with the shelled peas.

About 5 minutes before the risotto is ready, cook your samphire. None of us had ever had it before and Zosia was anxious about putting it straight in with the risotto in case we did it wrong or it turned out awful, so we loosely followed THIS recipe (the first one) and boiled it for 4 minutes. We added the butter and seasoned but instead of oil and lemon wedges we just added a squirt of Jiff from the fridge. We are students, after all.

Once all the stock has been added and the risotto's looking good, add the rocket, tarragon and cheese and stir well. I also added a drizzle of garlic-infused olive oil because I found some in the cupboard and it's amazing, but that's not really a necessity. Serve with the samphire on the side.

So there you go. It sounds posh, but in actual fact we ate a restaurant quality (if we say so ourselves) meal for only £4 each. Eating fancy on a budget is easy when you cook for yourself.