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.)

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!