Queen of Rambles

I’ve had a couple of people ask me for this, so I’ll go ahead and post it. Be warned, it is not really proper risotto at all and I don’t really know exact measurements.

Finely chop half an onion
mince a couple of cloves of garlic
finely chop a red or yellow bell pepper
grate up a carrot if you want

Boil a couple of cups of water in the microwave then keep it handy

Heat up a non-stick pan on medium-high. Spray it with a light coating of Pam, then cook the veggies until tender. Also, cook a chicken bullion cube at the same time (or you could put the bullion cube in the water).

When the onion is just about tender, pour a bunch of risotto rice into the skillet. Maybe one deciliter. I never measure. Basically just cover the bottom of the pan with a thing layer. Fry that up for a while with all the veggies. When it starts to get translucent, cover it with a little water and stir. Turn the heat down to low. Keep adding hot water and stirring. The more you stir, the creamier it will be. It’s pretty boring. I am really bad and turn the heat up a little hotter than I should so it cooks a little faster. Anyway, you just keep stirring and adding water for about 20 minutes. Go and check your e-mail a couple of times to make the time go faster, but don’t forget to go back and stir and keep adding water. Maybe add some pepper or salt in there if you want to. Basil can be nice too.

Sometime in there you can add about half a can of beans. I like lentils the best. But then you have to be careful when you stir, or you’ll have mashed beans.

After about 20 minutes or so test the rice and see if it is soft yet. Keep cooking until it is soft. If it is soft and you still have a lot of liquid on it you can turn the heat up to boil it off.

When the rice is done and the water is mostly boiled off add a couple of tablespoons of grated low-fat cheese and stir that up. If your risotto wasn’t creamy before it should be creamy now.

I don’t think this is a very proper risotto, but it’s what I’ve been obsessing on. I eat it as a whole meal since the beans make it protein rich.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2003 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.