Pumpkin Risotto

 

Best Wishes for the New Year everyone. (I know it's late, but better late than never) I've gone missing for sometime, But I'm back invigorated from my holidays back home in Sri Lanka. It's always great to be back with your loved ones, someone to pamper with all good food cooked with love and mere company of my parents. It's never enough and always feels very difficult to get back to routine in this foreign land.

You may wonder if I had cooked all the recipes in this blog. Some of these recipes are my experiments, whereas most of the others are regular food I make and there are also some that I have made purely for blogging. Today's recipe is also one of them. I tasted this at a Swiss home and thought I have to share this with my readers.

Roasted Vegetables Pasta

My relationship with baking is similar to meeting a good old friend after a long break. I have childhood memories of mom's baked goodies. She would bake buns, cookies and cakes. I still remember mom's lemon cake aroma gradually enveloping the whole house. We would just wait till the oven bell rings to grab and eat.

Few years later, I started baking and became an avid baker of eggless cakes. But when we started moving, we never wanted to incur additional expense to buy an oven. However here I got an inbuilt oven in the kitchen. Its only been 3 months since I started baking, but I already feel like I cannot cook without an oven.

Vegetarian Spaghetti

Spaghetti and noodles are my favorite dinner meals. However they are high in starch, hence especially if you’re taking it as dinner it has to be consumed in moderation. I picked up this spaghetti sauce idea from Jamie Oliver; however I did not want to serve them only with sauce. Because I was only going to use around 100g -150g of spaghetti for 2, so I had to make it filling by adding more vegetables and legumes. I added other Italian ingredients like olives, 3 colored peppers, zucchini and kidney beans. Just as I’m writing this post I got an idea; next time I should add some spinach or basil leaves. Try it out…. I’m sure you guyz will like it.

Kidney Bean Risotto

Kidney beans are known for their high folate, protein and mineral content. High levels of magnesium found in the kidney beans provide added cardiovascular health benefits. Since these are high in proteins, they make good meat substitutes for vegetarians. These can be cooked with pastas, brown rice or added to salads; one can enjoy eating these rich protein sources without worrying about the calories.

Ingredients
Serves 2-3


2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion diced
1 tbsp minced garlic and ginger
2 tbsp tomato puree
100g rice washed
200 g boiled / canned kidney beans
1 vegetable soup cube
Salt and pepper
 2 red chilies diced
1 celery stalk diced
5-6 chestnut mushrooms thinly sliced
Minced parsley for garnish
50g grated cheese / soy cheese


Method
Heat oil in a large pan. Add onion, garlic and ginger cook for 2 minutes. Add celery, mushroom, rice and stir for 2 minutes till grains are coated with oil.


Add stock cube, 200 ml water, salt and bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes, until rice is cooked and liquid is absorbed.


Add kidney beans, red chili’s. Season with salt and pepper, stir well. Serve them in bowl and garnish with grated cheese and minced parsley.