River Cottage Veg Everyday: Tomato and Mozzarella Risotto

Another River Cottage recipe on Wednesday. This time the tomato and mozzarella risotto. 

You first have to make the tomato puree which is made by roasting 1.5 to 2kg of tomatoes with garlic and herbs and then sieve it all. Mr VST helped with this and he put it all through the blender first and then the sieve to get all the pips and skin out. 

While the tomatoes were roasting I cooked up an onion and then added the rice and cooked it in vegetable stock. 

Once the rice is cooked you add the tomato purée and shred the mozzarella and let it melt in. 

It was a tasty risotto, the roasted tomato purée has a lovely flavour and it comes out more the day after. 

Curry with Chickpeas

The usual quick easy curry with chickpeas on Tuesday. Anyone got a good recipe for naan's? There's not one in any of my bread books. 

River Cottage Baked Mushrooms with Dauphinoise Potatoes

My friends and family know me well and I often get food related presents for birthdays and Christmases and I don't mind a bit. I will quite happily take a recipe book to bed for some night time reading! One of my presents from Mr VST was the new River Cottage Veg Everyday recipe book. 

It is packed full of veggie recipes, everything from mezze to mains although some of the 'recipes' are really just ideas. I'm not sure that you can call putting a few large mushrooms in the oven with garlic and butter a recipe exactly. I love that it is bright and colourful with pictures of most of the recipes, it is always nice to know what you food is supposed to look like. 

Anyway, Monday evening I decided to test out a couple of the recipes, one was the baked field mushrooms which I have described above and the other was the potato dauphinoise.

Mr VST and I made these together and used Oatly oat 'cream' rather than dairy as I had found some in the new Waitrose last Friday.

Both recipes were very tasty indeed and the recipes worked well although the mushrooms needed a bit longer than suggested. 

More from the River Cottage book later.....

The Riverstation, Bristol

The birthday celebrations continued last Sunday, still in Bristol. I had a lovely meal with my family who had come from Nottingham and Wales just for lunch! 

We went to The Riverstation which, as the name suggests, is on the river in Bristol. We were about ten minutes late sitting down, which seemed to have annoyed our waiter immediately. He was very polite but it was obvious to me that we had annoyed him, eek! Anyway, once we settled in all was fine. There was a choice of two or three courses for £16.50 or £20 which was very reasonable. Mr VST and I shared a goat's curd salad to start with which was lovely. The goat's curd was quite mild and the dressing was delicious. For the main course we both had the butternut squash risotto which was exactly as a risotto should be, very creamy! We shared a chocolate, chestnut and orange terrine which was perfect and just melted in the mouth. 

There are so many places to eat in Bristol and I haven't been to that many of them but this was a lovely venue and the food was of a very high standard for a very reasonable price. 

The Lounge, Bristol

Right! I've finally got the netbook back from Mr VST who has been using it to order himself, well us, a new iMac as his laptop has broken. So back to last Saturday. I met up with some of my school friends in Bristol and we went for a late lunch/early supper at The Lounge in Bristol. There are quite a few 'lounges' around Bristol and I used to live near the Porto Lounge. It was great for breakfasts and brunches. 

As we were there for lunch/dinner I went for the butternut squash curry with rice, naan and raita. It was lovely as was the sticky toffee pudding!

Baked Camembert with Roasted Garlic

A new Waitrose opened in town last Thursday and Mr VST and I went to explore on Friday evening. They had a great cheese selection and Mr VST also fell for the olives. While we were there I suggested to Mr VST that we try out the baked camembert with roasted garlic recipe that we had seen on TV ages ago. 

It was very easy to assemble the ingredients.

I think I may have had the oven on too hot, I don't remember Lorraine Pascal's looking like this.

It tasted great though.

The roasted garlic was mellow and smooth and not harsh at all. It went really well with the gooey camembert.

We fell for the bread in Waitrose, organic it may have been but pappy it still was.

This was a really tasty and easy Friday night meal and one I am sure we will be having again. 

Jacket Potatoes

I was totally disorganised last week. We had been away and I hadn't thought about what we were going to eat or had a chance to go shopping so we were left with what was left in the cupboards. 

These jackets were great though. Really tasty, done properly in the oven.