Metal Mummy

For Christmas, I bought James a copy of Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals. James is a bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, and is always looking for new, affordable, relatively easy recipes to make. Despite the fact the recipes clearly take longer than 30 minutes to do, the ones we have done have been lovely.

The reason why they take Jamie 30 minutes to do is because:
1) He’s a professional chef who can chop things faster than lightening and can multi task without cocking up
2) He’s done the recipe before
3) He has a food processor

We don’t have a food processor, so something that would take Jamie 2 minutes to do in a processor, takes us 15 with a knife. If you give yourself enough leeway for that, it can be done in about 45 minutes rather than 30. Still, not bad for a lovely meal.

Yesterday, James was working, and I was working in the evening, so I went ahead and had a go at one of these recipes. I’m not the world’s most confident cook. I can cook. I just don’t really venture from what I know very often. So when I offered to make his mushroom risotto and a spinach salad, I was a little nervous. I’d not made a risotto before. Ack.

Apart from having a toddler running around my feet who found that 45 minutes I needed to be a hyperactive, badly behaved little monster, I think I did quite well. Stirring a risotto and adding water every minute for 16 minutes proved to be very difficult – especially as it seemed that every minute on the dot, Freyja was up to something and had gone quiet, such as…
- putting half a roll of toilet paper down the loo
- trying to climb on the loo (with the seat up) to reach the flusher to flush the half a roll of paper down the loo
- getting handfuls of sawdust out of the hamster bag and treading it into the carpets around the house
- taking her trousers and nappy off
- weeing on the floor
- going upstairs on her own etc…

But, it worked. The timings were fab – it was ready just as James walked through the door. And Freyja liked it. So, here’s the recipe, and a sneaky little photo of the final product.

Ingredients for the Risotto (Full recipe a la Jamie can be found here)

1 large onion
1 stick celery
dried rosemary
300g risotto rice
1/2 glass white wine
1 chicken stock cube
500g mimxed mushrooms (I used normal, chestnut & oyster)
1 clove garlic
dried thyme
large knob of butter (*teehee* I said knob)
40g parmesan cheese
lemon juice
dried parsley

Ingredients for the Spinach salad

100g pinenuts
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
lemon juice
200g prewashed baby spinach
dried mint
5 jarred sundried tomatoes (yuck)
1 medium cucumber

Method for Risotto

Fill and boil the kettle. Put a large high-sided pan (what’s one of these) on a medium heat. Turn the grill to full whack.

Halve and peel the onion. Put it in the processor with the celery. (If you don’t have a processor, use a trusty knife…) Finely chop. Put some oil in the saucepan and scrape in the veg.

Pick and finely chop the rosemary leaves and add to the saucepan with the rice. Stir well for 1 minute, then pour in the white wine and crumble int he stock cube, stirring until the wine is absorbed. Season, then add a mug of boiling water. Come back to the risotto adding a good glug of boiling water, every minute or so for about 16 minutes. Put a large ovenproof frying pan on a high heat. Rinse the mushrooms and tear half of them into the risotto pan and the other half into the frying pan with some oil and seasoning. Crush over the clove of garlic. Add some thyme and add the rest to the risotto.

Put the frying pan of mushrooms under the grill on the top shelf to crisp up (I had to tranfser it to a baking tray cuz our pan isn’t ovenproof).

Check the mushrooms and remove from the grill when golden and crispy. The risotto should be porridge like. Stir in the butter, grate over most of the parmesan and add the lemon juice. Aeason as well. Sprinkle a good pinch of parsley over the risotto and the rest over the mushrooms. Add the remaining parmesan to the finished meal.

Method for the Spinach Salad

Toast the pinenuts.

Put 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar, juice of half a lemon, 3 tbsp olive oil and salt & pepper in a salad bowl with the pine nuts.

Roughly slice handfuls of spinach (1cm thick) and add to the bowl with the mint. Roughly chop and add the sundried tomatoes. Halve and slice the cucumber and add that too. Toss at the last minute.

It’s a pretty simple recipe to do. The problem with the book is it has no timings. He assumes that you will be able to stick to the recipe point by point, and that’s all the timing you need. It seemed to work that way, although I did lose myself whilst doing the risotto but it turned out well. All I would say is prep in advance, and do the salad first, then you can concentrate on the risotto. The actual recipe is set out in different stages which mixes up both methods, in the hope that you do want both parts of the recipe. Not so sure that would work every time. If you just assume the risotto takes about 20 minutes, and taste as you go, that’s the main thing. Everything else is fairly straightforward.