3 Ways to Make Garlic Bread

I make garlic bread a lot. Like, once or twice every week. We have it with risotto. Or with pasta. Or with savoury rice. Or with stew, sometimes, or vegetable bakes... You get the picture. Anyway, I end A LOT of posts with 'serve with garlic bread' and it's in millions of pictures - and I recently realised I'd never actually blogged a recipe for it. My bad!

The basic recipe is the same for all three variations, all that differs is how you put it together and cook it. It's the easiest thing, and I promise once you've had it shop-bought garlic bread will never seem the same again.

Ingredients:
- butter: enough to cover however much bread you have.
- garlic: one clove per person.
- drizzle of olive oil
- squirt of lemon juice
- handful of chopped parsley (or a good sprinkle of dried)
- salt and pepper

Method:
Chop the garlic as finely as you can and stick everything in a bowl. Mix it up. THAT'S IT. Told you it was easy.

Now, the different kinds...

1. This is my favourite sort, and the easiest.
Grab yourself some part-baked bread (tesco usually has 4 batons for £1, and it freezes like a charm). Cut open and spread with your garlic butter. Bake according to the instructions on the bread packet.

2. This is great if you haven't got any of the part-baked bread, but do have general bread.
Slice your bread, but not quite to the bottom. This way all the butter stays in better, and it's fun ripping it when it's cooked (if you have ready-sliced bread, don't worry, keep reading). Use your garlic butter to spread your slices on both sides then press them together, before wrapping it all up in tinfoil and baking at 200°C for about 20 minutes.

3. This one's for if you have some time on your hands. It will impress, though!
Make yourself some pizza dough. Spread with your garlic butter (not quite to the edges) and cook at 220°Cfor 10-15 minutes, until it's all golden.

ALSO, any of them can be made gluten free. For the first two, quarter a few slices of gluten free bread and then cook in exactly the same ways. For the third, use gluten free flour. It actually couldn't be easier.

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...

Proper Gluten Free Pasta

Firstly, apologies for the lack of posting this month! General end of term stress combined with moving out of this year's house (and, in my case, carting my possessions 300 miles up the country) has left us fairly exhausted. But this one's awesome enough to make up for it - I promise.

Since watching it done on Masterchef and countless other BBC food programmes, I've wanted to make my own pasta. At some point Zosia happened to mention missing ravioli since having to cut out gluten, and that was that. GLUTEN FREE RAVIOLI.

And you know what? It wasn't difficult. I didn't have a pasta-maker. And it was the best gluten free recipe I've ever made. Usually gluten free baking makes everything sort of crumbly, but this was properly elastic and smooth and lovely and I was so pleased. It was based on this recipe and took a little bit of time (and some extra man-power with the rolling out - thanks Harry!), but I'll definitely be making it again.

Ingredients (serves 4):
- 300g gluten free plain flour
- 1tbsp xantham gum
- 1tsp salt
- 5 eggs
- 1½tbsp olive oil

Method:
1. Mix together all the dry ingredients, then add the eggs and oil and mix until it stops resembling breadcrumbs and starts to come together (ideally, this would be done in a food processor).

2. Remove from the food processor, if using, and knead for a few minutes until a smooth ball has formed.
3. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 15 minutes - or as long as you need to while you do other things (this is a good time to make your ravioli filling).
4. Remove from the fridge and divide the mixture into four (this makes it MUCH easier to work with), then sprinkle some flour onto your worktop and roll out one of the pieces of dough to about half a centimetre. Then, fold the dough 4 or 5 times and roll out again. Repeat this about 6-7 times, or until your arms give up!
5. Roll out your dough as thin as you can get it. Then, for ravioli, use a biscuit cutter (or a glass) to cut shapes.
6. Beat another egg in a bowl with a splash of milk (you can just use milk if you're all out of eggs). Take one pasta shape and put a teaspoon of your ravioli filling into the middle (I made a spinach and ricotta filling - half the amounts there served three of us, so adjust to what you need). Brush around the edges with a little of the beaten egg, then grab another shape and stick down firmly. If it's not properly stuck it'll burst in the pan, so get pressing!

7. Repeat the whole thing with the rest of the dough (I told you it was a bit time consuming).
8. Bring a big pan of salted water to the boil and drizzle in some olive oil. Carefully drop in the pasta and cook for 4-5 minutes (the cooking time depends on the thickness of the pasta: if it was tagliatelle or something without a filling it would be more like 3-4 minutes). The best way to take it out and make sure it doesn't break is to use a slotted spoon, though don't worry if you don't have one.

9. Serve up with a good sauce. I made this because it's one of my favourites, and it was great. Like, REALLY great. Go make it.

The One That Made Rebecca Eat Vegetables

Mum could never make risotto - she has no patience for all the stirring - so we always had savoury rice instead. And as risotto is my university staple, this was my Mum's. And it's awesome. 

I made it last year for Zosia, Rebecca and Felix, and we noticed Rebecca leaving all the vegetables, which she'd done before but we'd never picked up on. We then discovered that Rebecca didn't like vegetables. Cue going through each one ('these are mange tout, they're kind of like peas...'), until SHE'D EATEN ALL THE VEGETABLES. This is my claim to fame and also brilliant-ness.

The 'Getting Rebecca to Eat Vegetables' Process

Ingredients:
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 carrot, diced
- 300g brown rice
- 600ml water
- 1tsp marmite
- 1-2tbsp herb de provence
- 1tbsp tomato purée
- salt and pepper
- handful green beans
- 75g baby corn
- 75g sugar snaps, or mange tout
- 150g cheddar cheese, grated

Method:
1. In a large saucepan, fry the onion  and garlic with a knob of butter for a few minutes. Add the carrot and cook for about 8 more minutes, until softened.
2. Add the rice and stir well. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the water, marmite, tomato purée and herbs, and season.
3. Bring to the boil, then put on a lid (or tin foil if you don't have one), turn down the temperature and simmer for 30 minutes - stirring halfway through so it doesn't stick.
4. Add the beans, corn and sugar snaps and cook for 5 more minutes before adding the cheese. Turn off the heat and put the lid back on for a minute so all the cheese melts, then serve - preferably with lots of garlic bread or courgette fritters.

 It's super simple, and unlike risotto it requires no effort whatsoever. So no patience required! The only thing is it doesn't keep so well (though I may attempt savoury rice patties at some point), so make sure you have plenty of people to eat it all!