Friday, 1 July 2011

Risotto with an eastern twist


This is based on another recipe from my 200 veggie feasts book. In the original version were ingredients of the sort not found in the average kitchen (most people I know have never even heard of mirin, for example... and Blogger's spellchecker certain doesn't seem to know what it is!) and I was not about to send you on wild goose chase for the sake of a few mls of this (30mls in the case of the mirin, for example) and a dash of that.

So I adapted.

As you would expect.

Ingredients
1200ml of veg stock (alright, you can use chicken if you must!)
15ml soy sauce
30ml white wine (or use sake or mirin if you have it)
60ml sunflower or olive oil (or replace 15mls with sesame oil, if you have some)
A few spring onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2.5cm piece of root ginger, peeled and grated (or a tablespoon of the 'very lazy' kind in a tube or bottle - don't use dried ground ginger if you can avoid it - it's nowhere near as nice)
375g arborio/paella rice (or bog standard rice, if it's all you have)
4 kaffir lime leaves, ripped up, or the grated zest of 1 lime
250g mushrooms (shiitake if you can get them, otherwise - you know - whatever), sliced
About 30ml chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves with a few extras for garnish

Method
  • Warm up the stock, wine and soy sauce, but don't let it boil.
  • Heat 45ml of the oil in a saucepan or large frying pan and throw in the spring onions, garlic and ginger and stir fry on high for about a minute.
  • Lower the heat and add the rice and the lime leaves. Stir for about a minute until all the grains of rice are coated.
  • Add about 150ml of stock and stir until absorbed. Keep stirring and adding stock until you have about half a cupful left in the jug. You might like to turn the heat off on the rice while you do this next bit.
  • Use the remaining oil in a different panto fry the mushrooms for about 5 minutes.
  • Add the coriander and mushrooms to the rice, with the remaining stock. If you turned the heat off before, turn it back on now, but keep it low.
  • Stir until the liquid is pretty much absorbed.
  • Garnish with a few bits of fresh coriander leaf.

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