Keeping the kids happy.

On Monday night, I finally made a recipe that I’d been blissfully ignoring for a while and even though it turned out looking more like baby food than the last risotto I made, it was somewhat more gourmet than Heinz.

Tomato, Basil & Ricotta Risotto

To the basic risotto recipe (which, lets face it, I’m a bit of a gun at these days!), I added the tomatoes that I’d prepared earlier. They were deseeded, chopped and marinated in red wine vinegar, S&P and oregano. After I’d stirred them through, I took the risotto off the heat and added the ricotta.

So the thing with ricotta is, I don’t really like it. I think that, coupled with the fact that I just hadn’t really been all that fussed about this recipe at all, meant that when reading through it before writing my shopping list, I obviously completely ignored the part where Jamie said to use crumbly ricotta, not creamy ricotta, and that if I couldn’t get the crumbly stuff, to use crumbly goats cheese instead. Oops. What did I have? Yep, creamy ricotta. Ahem…

Anyway, apart from the fact that I had the wrong ingredient, I still followed instructions and baked the ricotta with dried chilli flakes and some olive oil for ten minutes. Whereas the crumbly version is meant to sort of go crispy and golden, my creamy version just turned into a puddle of goo. Yum. Incorrect, but still yum. And I don’t even like ricotta!

Needless to say that when I added it to the risotto, it didn’t exactly stiffen the mixture. Rather the opposite in fact and once the knob of butter, the basil and the parmesan were added as well, it turned out looking like a very tasty and sophisticated baby food.




Apart from the texture and the look, the best way to describe it was Italy on a plate. For babies.

Xx