Fennel Risotto and Tri-Colour Ciabatta - Meat Free Monday

Meat Free Monday - Summer Week 8 - 
Fennel Risotto and Tri-colour Ciabatta

Week 1 of cooking my way through Meat Free Monday!!

I wanted to do it properly, I really did, but you just can't buy baby artichokes in deepest Sydney suburbia! So I combined 2 of their recipes and came up with a great Fennel Risotto. 

I also tried their packed lunch option of a ciabatta with tomato, avacado and buffalo mozarella. It was fabulous and one to be repeated for sure. 

Their full menu has:
Breakfast - Mango and Lime - Yum
Packed Lunch - Tri-colour Ciabatta (see below)
Home Lunch - Stuffed Tomatoes with Gruyere (sounds great - would like to try some time.)
side dish - Basil scented braised Fennel  
Dinner - Risotto with Artichokes (see my variation below)
Dessert - Fruity Amaretti (really meant to make this, even made the ricotta from scratch - but time got away from me - I will try it sometime soon and let you know how it goes.)

Risotto with Artichokes  Fennel

Ingredients

(Serves 4 - but only just)

3 baby Fennel, finely sliced
2 cloves of Garlic, crushed
2 Tb Olive Oil
1 litre Vegetable Stock
75g Butter
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
300g Arborio Rice
3-4 Tb white wine
75g freshly grated parmesan
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method 

* Gently heat vegetable stock in a saucepan

* Melt 1/2 the butter with the olive oil in a heavy based pan. Gently fry the onion, garlic and fennel until soft - about 10 minutes - stirring now and then.

* Add the rice and stir until it is coated in oil.

* Add the wine and stir until it has been absorbed.

* Start adding the hot stock a ladleful at a time, stir until it is absorbed, then continue with next one. Over about 15 minutes all stock should be absorbed and the rice should be creamy on the outside and slightly al dente in the middle.

* Gently stir in the remaining butter and parmesan and serve immediately.

* I suggest serving with a green salad with a tangy dressing to offset the richness of the risotto.

Tri-colour Ciabatta

serves 1 

Ingredients
A small Ciabatta Roll
a little extra virgin olive oil
1 tomato, sliced
1 avacado, sliced
1/2 a ball of fresh mozzarella (or  a few baby bocconcini)
A few basil leaves
freshly ground salt and pepper

Method

* Cut Ciabatta in half and toast under the grill.

* Drizzle a little olive oil over the roll.

* Layer some tomato and avacado slices on one side of the roll

* Tear the mozzarella over the top (you could slice it but tearing it was fun and sounds good)


* Top with some salt and pepper and some basil leaves, and the top of the roll.

* Pack and take to work to look forward to all morning (or eat straight away as I did being on holidays!)

Happy Meat Free Monday!
Nicola

Savoury Muffins

(This is a post I wrote months ago but for some reason forgot to post. Oops!)

This morning I made some not particularly impressive, but scrumptious savoury muffins. I made them for lunch, because I was in the mood for cooking, yet feeling remarkably uinspired, this morning, so once again turned to Taste.com.au for ideas. Given the time of day, I browsed their lunch recipe collection and found a fairly plain, yet very inspiring savoury muffin recipe. More internet searching led me to base the muffins on recipes I found HERE, because I loved the flexibility it presented. So, based on what we had in the crisper, I made the courgette and pine nut muffins- but with no courgette or pine nut (or basil or sultanas). Instead I added diced yellow capsicum, grated carrot and sliced olives. I also substituted plain flour for wholemeal and parmesan for tasty cheese. (I think that you could probably substitute whatever you liked, so long as it didn't change the ratios).

Through the course of making the muffins I became more and more convinced that they were going to fail, because all the vegetable quantities (as well as that of the cheese) were completely made up! However the muffins worked better than I expected, and were actually pretty yummy. A little heavy, but better than last time I made savoury muffins (with a completely different recipe), although that time I really made little savoury rocks, because I left out the eggs! They made a great lunch, and the leftovers are stored away in the freezer for their calling- which I'm guessing will be school lunches next week! I only took one photo- still not used to this whole recording as you cook thing- but promise to take more next time.

Mia