Mushroom, Leek, Basil, and Pine Nut Risotto

Lately, I've been going to the vegetable aisle in supermarkets to stare at it for inspiration. I did that yesterday at Waitrose and came up with this. It's really light and summery. Before that, I came up with a corn, asparagus, and capsicum risotto recipe but I can't exactly remember what else went into it.

I haven't used carnaroli rice much- only about twice before and twice now- and I find that it takes much longer to cook than arborio.


Ingredients
4 cups chicken stock + 2 cups water
2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 medium sized leek, sliced thinly

1 cup carnaroli rice
0.5 cup button mushrooms, quartered
Freshly grated zest and juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons fresh basil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
30g parmigiano reggiano

Procedure
Put the stock and water to simmer on low heat.
In another pot, heat the butter until melted. Add onion, garlic, and leeks, stirring until translucent. Add the carnaroli rice and stir for 1 minute to lightly "toast" the rice. Add 1 cup of stock/water mixture and stir constantly until absorbed.
Add the mushrooms and one more cup of water and stir. Keep on stirring until almost all the water gets absorbed. Once water is absorbed, add another cup of water.
Check the rice once in a while to make sure it's cooked. If the rice is still not fully cooked and the water has run out, add some boiling water from the kettle and stir. Repeat the process until rice is fully cooked.
Remove from heat, stir in lemon zest and juice, basil, and pine nuts. Garnish with parmigiano reggiano.

Cappuccinos and Cupcakes

Or both in one.

The minute I spotted these adorable silicone cupcake cases by Fred at Selfridge's, I snatched them. I could just imagine all the different scenarios I'd create with these teacups: elegant garden parties, a breakfast snack, an optical illusion..

Last week, I got this idea to make cupcakes in them and frost them in a way so that they look like the froth on a cappuccino. I was extremely adamant to capture them in natural light and so I baked the cupcakes last night and made the frosting this morning. Well, I didn't make the frosting. I bought the frosting. Shocking, isn't it? I had a huge internal battle with myself over that. But the pros outweighed the cons and so I crossed over to the dark side. Just for today though. I didn't have much time, and I really wanted the frosting to be perfect.. so I opted to use ready frosting. The idea of it is so appealing to the time-constrained.. Just frost it on! No mess, no dishes to wash, no consistency to get right. But no, I will not use ready frosting again. SIGH. Anyways, I frosted the cupcakes with Betty Crocker's rainbow chip frosting.. The pastel multicoloured quality of the frosting made the cupcakes look super cute.

I sort of compensated for using ready made frosting by using a recipe that I had developed myself.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

120g butter

120g caster sugar

120g self raising flour

2 eggs

1 and 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons cocoa powder.

Procedure:

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Sift flour into mixture and fold in. Add vanilla extract, stir. In a small bowl mix cocoa powder with milk and stir (not thoroughly though... do not dissolve the cocoa entirely..) Add cocoa/milk mixture to batter and stir well. Yields about 9 cupcakes.. (five regular paper cased ones, and four silicon cupcake mould ones) Baking time around 12-15 minutes at 180C.

I had a lovely time styling these today though. Sorry if the pictures are repetitive.. I'm really proud of them though! There's nothing like using unobstructed natural lighting! Whenever I manage to take pictures of food it's always at night.. or outdoors with sunlight that's too harsh.. or in rooms where the sunlight enters but isn't that bright. I used the window of my bedroom for these shots today. I didn't add a diffuser with a soft sheer curtain either. I just positioned the table in such a way it caught the best lighting. And I experimented a lot with shutter speeds, ISOs, exposures, and apertures..

My Classics

As I've gone on cooking and baking I've come up with certain "classic" dishes of mine. These dishes are ones that were amazing successes, or ones that people have loved and asked for time and time again.

Here are some of savoury and sweet classics:

SAVOURY:

Fresh tomato and caper penne

Lamb and corn quesadillas

Vegetable risotto

Baked tortellini and vegetables

Rogan josh

Tomato soup with pasta and basil

Pumpkin and sweet potato stew

Fettuccine with rocket pesto and tomato

Lasagne

Shepherd's pie

Beef and eggplant bake with polenta

Chicken chilli stirfry

Spicy chicken fried rice

Satay noodle combo

Chicken cacciatore with polenta

Chicken and spinach pie

Spicy penne with peppers

Mushroom, spinach, and lemon risotto

SWEET:

Crackle cookies

Chocolate shortbread drops

Chocolate buttercream on vanilla cupcakes

Marble cake

Vanilla cupcakes with a lemony, glacé icing

Tiramisu

Triple truffle cake (a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and white, dark, and milk chocolate truffles!)

Chocolate self saucing pudding

Berries with orange syrup and mascarpone

These recipes are from cookbooks that I've been using over the years. :)

Ramadan Recipes

Ramadan has become commercialized so much lately what with food advertisements/offers, late night enticements and TV shows that there is one particular irony I find: Ramadan, the month of fasting and technically an ABSENCE of food from your day becomes.. the month OF food..

So keeping in line with the "food" theme of Ramadan, here are some of the things that I have cooked since the start of the month.
chicken and leek pie
roasted vegetable risotto
tomato, chilli, and olive salad
grilled chicken with green olive butter
pasta with aubergine and tomato sauce
cherry and almond cake
chicken chilli stirfry

I personally thought that the chicken and leek pie, roasted vegetable risotto, and chicken chilli stirfry were the top three. The chicken and leek pie was a big dish covered with puff pastry and was substantial enough for Iftar. The herbs mixed with the chicken and milk brought out a wonderful flavour.

The roasted vegetable risotto was interesting because I used carnaroli rice for the first time instead of arborio! I personally didn't notice many differences between the two except that maybe carnaroli takes a little longer to cook and doesn't soften as easily as arborio does. The vegetables were roasted, thus bringing out stronger flavours, and the risotto was made separately completely plain which was good!
Interesting article I found: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/other-risotto-rices.aspx

I've always stayed away from cooking chicken or meat in stirfries because for some reason I always find that the meat/chicken stays hard. This time however, I had an amazing result! I cooked with peanut oil for the first time.. which is what you should use when stirfrying, and cut the chicken up into smaller pieces thus increasing the surface area and having it cook easier and faster. The sauce.. oyster sauce tasted fabulous with freshly ground black pepper. The vegetables I used were beansprouts, red capsicum, and snow peas. I love how when you make a stir fry and throw all the vegetables in the wok, they're huge... but a few minutes later they're cooked through and become half of their size..

I've also been experimenting with table settings. I got these amazing napkins and placemats from London. Here's the website of the company that makes them: http://mydrap.com/ES/index.php . They're cotton and linen placemats and napkins that come in kitchen roll style.. so all you have to do is unroll the amount you need and tear at the perforated section. Best part is that because they're cotton or linen you can wash them and reuse them!

Some table themes I've been using lately are summer lunch, carnival, beachside picnic, and classic dinner... which is mainly cream and ivory with little bits of light green.