Tiger Food: Three cheese risotto

I was all prepared to post my birthday list (what's more fun than listing things you want? NOT A LOT), then I had another lazy day and had a nap and made an insanely good (and so simple!) risotto last night that I feel everyone needs the recipe for.

I've been going through food blogs bookmarking recipes I like, and I've been craving risotto for about two weeks since I found some arborio rice in the cupboard. I am also very lazy, as I've outlined in the past two posts having done nothing with my weekend! So this recipe from Not Quite Nigella was very excellent to cure my risotto need. I used a 4L box of stock, but it seemed a bit too runny. This is probably because I didn't read the recipe properly. However, it was still delicious last night for dinner and today for lunch!

*******EDIT******** I made this again last night, and I was right! It was a 1L box of stock that said 4 Cups on the front, so I got confused and assumed thats why I got it wrong. The first time I added 0.5 cups of hot water to make up the 4.5 cups, so I omitted that this time, but it was still a bit runny. I'm not going to do it with less stock, though, because its so convenient using a whole box of stock at once.

Not Quite Nigella's Three Cheese Risotto

1.5 cups Arborio rice
4.5 cups stock
1.5 cups grated cheese (we used cheddar, marinated feta and parmesan)

Put the oven to 180 degrees. Heat the stock on the stovetop.

Meanwhile, rinse the rise and put in an oven dish. Add the cheese and any seasonings (normally I'd use herbs, but there was a lot of garlic at the bottom of the feta dish so that went right in there). Pour the stock over the rice.

Cover with foil and put in the oven for 20 minutes.

Serve! (I added extra grated parmesan and pepper, but that is because I'll add them to any dish I can.)

Unwrapped Markets

Look at all the goodies I got from the Unwrapped markets on Saturday!



I've been looking for these brooches since I stole my friend's red one a few months ago! So I got the green one to mix things up. Also, Tara got the red one so hopefully we can trade sometimes! By Kearnsie



Boris the Hippo by My Girl Gwendoline.



The first edition of the MadeIt recipe zine. Because, you know, I'm a bit obsessive about cooking and the like.

Vegetable Couscous with parmesan and black pepper

That's really a fancy name for "Ohhhh I can't be bothered, what do we have in the house?" food.

This is pretty easy to cook.

Firstly, make up the couscous for however many people you are cooking for. 1/2 cup of dry couscous is enough for one person, and you need equal parts water and couscous. Put the water, some olive oil and salt in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once its boiled, stir and take off the heat, adding the couscous and leaving it for two minutes.

Meanwhile (probably best to start while the water is boiling), put some chopped vegetables in a container and cover with water. Put the lid on and put in the microwave - I think about 10 minutes is normal but basically just until they're soft. I used zucchini and beans.

Back to the couscous - after the two minutes, add some butter and maybe more oil if its sticking, and put on a low heat. Separate the couscous with a fork so its all fluffy. At this stage, I grate some parmesan in so it melts into the couscous. Also because I love parmesan :D You only need to keep the couscous on the stove top for about three minutes.

Combine the couscous and vegetables in a bowl (I also put some chopped cherry tomatoes in at the end, but in hindsight maybe feta would be good as well?), grate some more parmesan over the top and add some cracked pepper. Yummy food in about 15 minutes!

Tiger Food: Spinach Eggs on Doorstopper Toast

Morning! This is my new favourite breakfast. It made two gigantic serves, so you could probably use it for four people. In fact, four people ate it because I couldn't finish mine. The original recipe was in the Australian Women's Weekly cookbook "The Fast Egg".

This was actually made pretty much entirely from leftovers of the Carbonara we made the night before - it used up the leftover eggs, facon, mushroom and the loaf that we used to make garlic bread. ECONOMICAL, GUYS. Also good because I've just moved out of home and I can't really afford to waste food.

SPINACH EGGS ON DOORSTOPPER TOAST

Stuff you need:
A loaf of awesome bread. We had a Pane di Casa, but Sourdough would be equally spectacular
3 eggs
Milk
Spinach leaves
Some sort of sliced ham or similar - we used facon because I made it for the Boy but I think the recipe I looked at used pancetta
Mushrooms

1. Cut the bread to your desired thickness of bread. Doorstopper slices are the way to go, but a lot of people like thinner bread so however you roll, homies.


Om nom nom bread

2. Break the ends off the spinach leaves and wilt them in the pan. Put a bit of butter or olive oil in the pan and wait until they've just changed colour (so about thirty seconds) and that makes them a bit less crunchy but not actually mushy. Put them on a plate and whack that in the oven to keep warm.


Pre-wilted spinach

3. Chop up the mushrooms and fry them, and fry the whole slices of your selected ham. I sliced half of the facon and left half whole because I'm silly and forgot I wasn't making carbonara and in fact didn't have to slice the facon. Put those bad boys in the oven as well.

4. Toast your bread. In the toaster, in the pan, under the grill, whatever works for you! Then keep that warm as well.

5. SCRAMBLE THOSE EGGS. I would give you directions for this but I'm not entirely sure how we did it, so... ask your mum how to.

6. Put it all together! We did the toast, then a whole piece of facon, then the eggs, then the vegetables. Serve with your selected breakfast beverage.


Yummy breakfast!

Food porn!

So, hi everyone, I've moved in with Tara (yesterday) and today is my first full day of unemployed, arts student life. Although I took a resume to the cafe down the road so hopefully that will change! I digress. As a result, I've watched a lot of daytime TV today.

I am a sucker for cooking shows. Nigella is a perennial favourite, I didn't really get into MasterChef until the repeats were on during my lunch break at work, but any reality TV show incorporating food is a win in my books. Thus, I enjoyed the repeat of My Kitchen Rules today and THANK GOODNESS, its on tonight as well!

So! Here are some lovely recipes and cooking sites and that to lust after. I'm planning to try and post recipes of mine soon, but I haven't had to cook dinner here yet :D


Roasted Butternut Squash with Caramelised Onion, Gorgonzola and Crispy Fried Sage from Closet Cooking. That website is amazing, by the way. And my inner vegetarian loves a good vege meal.


The Lime Cheesecake that made me feel all hungry-like from My Kitchen Rules. I had a really good lime cheesecake on the weekend at Grandma's and I really need to either get the recipe or find out where she bought it. Cheesecake crust, along with apple crumble topping, is one of my absolute weaknesses.


Chestnut Gnocchi from Not Quite Nigella. I love, love love love, gnocchi, but I've never been able to make it very well. When I worked at the Italian cafe, the chef made me gnocchi in butter with fried bread and herbs for lunch one day and it was quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever eaten.



An actual Nigella recipe - Orange French Toast. I'm not the biggest fan of OJ (too much pulp! *shudder*) but this sounds yummy.

Any food websites you like? Recipes? General love of food?

tiger food: carbonara

Heavily adulterated from the Woman's Day Step-by-Step Cookbook, but this is how dinner went down tonight:

PASTA CARBONARA

Stuff you need:
250g pasta (Fettucine is awesome)
1/3 cup grated parmesan
2 eggs
30g butter plus a little bit extra
4 rashers of bacon (or facon, if you're a vegetarian)

That's how I roll.

1. Boil the kettle and make yourself a cup of tea, then put the rest of the boiling water in a saucepan with some regular water. This just makes it boil faster if you're lazy like myself.

2. While the pasta is on, cut up the bacon. The recipe says to do it into strips, but I cut it into cubes because thats how Mum's always made it. Fry that shiznit up. If its facon, don't cook it for too long or it goes gross.

Chop chop chop

3. Melt the 30g butter in a bowl and add the parmesan. Mix it until its all combined, then add the 2 eggs which you previously beat together (see? Pays to read ahead in the recipe). Mix that all up.

mmm... cheese.

4. If you're following what I did exactly, this is the point where the tea comes in handy because the pasta is done, the facon/bacon is cooked, and the sauce (I use that term liberally) is done but your date is late. Hence, relax and read a book for a bit.

mmm.... tea.

5. When you're ready to finish it, drain the pasta and put it back into the saucepan. Add the extra bit of butter and reheat, toss the pasta in the butter and make sure its all coated. Transfer that into the pan you used to fry the bacon, and add the bacon and Liberal Sauce. Mix that together somewhat, and cook it over a low heat til its done. Serve that up, and you're good to go!

yummy in my tummy <3