Tomato and Mozzarella Risotto

Pasta with tomato sauce could easily be a desert island dish for me. I know it’s not that exciting and doesn’t exactly take much skill but I don’t mind. That’s part of it’s charm and appeal! It’s my ultimate comfort food after a day of ‘chewable’ soup at cookery school (more of which on Sunday), the meal I make when I have no time, the meal to line your stomach before a night out, the meal for when there’s nothing in the fridge. The meal for when I’m tired, a storm is brewing outside and Downton is on (hello last Sunday evening). But, much as I love it, it’s not the most interesting dish to share on the blog and even I need a change (however small) once in a while. Enter, tomato and mozzarella risotto. Obviously this contains all the the things that make pasta and tomato sauce great: carbs, cheese, tomato, a bit of herbage. Just in a way that makes it a little bit different and makes me feel like I’m doing some actual cooking! This recipe uses the same method as a basic risotto, just with the addition of a tin of tomatoes to the hot stock. Although it was only one tin, the resulting tomato flavour was surprisingly intense but I suppose you could add a blob of tomato puree as well to boost the flavour even further. I loved the final result – the strings of melting mozzarella, soft rice with just a little bit of bite left, sweetnesss from the onions… exactly what I needed! And fancy enough to serve to friends too. You can find the recipe here – funnily enough, right underneath a recipe for pasta and tomato sauce…

Caramelised Garlic Tart

I normally bake when I’m home alone, meaning that I have full decision making power in the kitchen and can choose to bake whatever I want from my books, magazines or To Bake list. However, last week these decisions were taken out of my hands as my Mum put in her requests for her Mother’s Day meal. For our main course she chose this Caramelised Garlic Tart, from Ottolenghi’s latest book Plenty. I love Ottolenghi’s shops and recipes but I don’t think this would have been a recipe I would ever have chosen on my own, despite its intro saying ‘‘I think this is the most delicious recipe in the world’ wrote Claudine after trying it out for me’. However, I’m glad that I did get to try it out as it certainly was delicious!It was maybe a little bit more involved than savoury recipes I normally do, but really I think it wasn’t that difficult and you can do parts of the recipe while other components cook. Anyway, the results were worth it! I’m not normally a big fan of goats cheese but I really loved this tart and I think it worked really well with the garlic. Speaking of which, garlic is definitely the predominant flavour – with 40 cloves (3 heads) of garlic it would be strange if it wasn’t! This sounded overwhelming, but after being blanched, fried and caramelised for 10minutes garlic loses its super intense flavour and becomes much more mellow, sweet and soft. Another unusual aspect of this tart was the puff pastry base – I’ve used puff for more rustic galettes, pies and turnovers but not pressed into a fluted tart tin. When you had to bake the case without beans the base completely puffed up but I just pressed it down and it was fine. I was slightly worried that when I went back to the finished tart the filling would be all over the oven floor, but it was all good! Overall, the tart definitely had an intense flavour and was rich but really good with a simple rocket salad on the side. You can find the recipe here and I strongly recommend you give it a try, even if like me it doesn’t sound like something you’d normally make. Enjoy!

Cheese and Onion Tear and Share Bread

I love a good foodie television show. There’s Masterchef – tears and shouty John and Gregg (who’s restaurant I did work experience at last year!). There’s Nigella’s series – fairy lights, dressing gowns and ‘cookie crumbs tumbling like Mexican mud’…There’s Nigel Slater and his gorgeous garden, Simon Hopkinson with slow-mo falling egg graphics or Sophie Dahl’s series where she cooks and reads poetry. Currently, there is The Great British Bake Off – which the week before last featured this delicious bread.Each week of the Bake Off is themed – and so this obviously came from Bread week, a challenging one that I know I would have found really hard. One of the contestants Jason, an 18 year old baker from Croydon, made this and after watching I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Melting cheese, soft bread and a crunchy top plus the onions in the mix – what’s not to like? Happily, the recipe is featured in the new book to go along with the show, and the next day another yeast adventure was going on in my kitchen. As I’m still very much a bread and yeast novice, this took me ages to make. It was an enjoyable process, just long because rolling, stuffing (with two fillings) and folding nineteen balls of bread dough is not going to be a quick process. Add in three sets of rising times and in turned into quite a days baking but the end result was worth it, and could have been even more so had I got it perfect. The problem was I placed all the nineteen dough balls too far apart before they went in the oven so they didn’t join together to properly make a tear and share bread. This meant they were a bit drier then would have been nice and so went stale faster. I had some straight out the oven when the cheese inside was still melting and warm and it was delicious! Sadly one person cannot eat 19 rolls very quickly :( Still, I would recommend the recipe as I think this could be irresistible if done properly! There are a couple more recipes from the Bake Off book that I want to make, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to do them soon. Enjoy :)