Wild Mushroom Risotto

If you can get hold of fresh wild mushrooms from somewhere, like Borough Market, during autumn and early winter then definitely make the most of it. Otherwise, a lot of shops sell them dried in little tubs or packets, which can be reconstituted in water prior to cooking.

All risottos start with the same basic essentials, or at least mine do: a diced onion and a couple of diced celery stalks, sauteed in butter and oil until soft. 

Add 300g of risotto rice and stir it through, letting it get hot. From experience, it is worth forking out for the pricey arborio stuff, it cooks in half the time of the other, cheaper, short grain varieties I tried using. Slosh in a glass (or teacup) full of white wine and stir through the rice mixture until it's all been absorbed.

Keep 750ml of hot vegetable stock in a saucepan on the heat and pour the first ladleful into the rice. Keep the rice on a medium heat, at least enough to keep it at a low sizzle. Stir, stir, stir and stir again. Keep stirring. Even if your arm is about to drop off, keep gently stirring the rice.

Eventually the stock will be absorbed and you'll need to add another ladle of stock and do it all over again. I mean, don't beat it up or anything, but do keep stirring and adding stock and stirring.

After adding all the stock, the rice should be near cooked. At this stage I turn the heat down very low (or even off), put a lid on the pan and get on with the exciting part.

Pick over and clean your mushrooms, in this case we had a good few handfuls each of chanterelles, trompettes, girolles and ceps. Heat up a frying pan with a little oil and butter, with some crushed garlic. Saute the large mushrooms first, adding in the smaller ones after the chunky ones have had a bit of a start.

When the mushrooms are ready mix them into the hot rice mixture with tons of grated parmesan and chopped parsley. 

If you can get hold of one (and I'm soooo lucky, my husband bought me one as a present!), grate in a lovely load of black truffle - also known as winter truffle. 

Finish with some butter and freshly cracked pepper and some truffle shavings.

Wogan Gosh (a Eurovision dinner)

I named this curry in honour of the one time eurovision commentator, much lamented since he left:- his ascerbic comments are the memories of my childhood and couldn't be matched by any modern presenter, no matter how much I love Graham Norton.

We don't see this very often: the UK at the top of the leaderboards

Of course it's basically rogan josh, a lamb curry with tomatoes and onions. I've used scrag end of lamb because it's super cheap but you can make it with other cheap cuts like neck fillet, or more expensive ones if you're feeling flush.

First things first, I trimmed all the meat off the scrags and set about turning it into a stock. Just the usual ingredients: celery, carrots, onion, parsley stalks, pepper and bay leaves. Covered with cold water and left to simmer for a couple of hours, lovely.



I coated the meat in cornflour and browned it in a hot pan and then put it to one side while I cooked up sliced garlic, a large sliced onion, a diced stick of celery, a dollop of grated ginger and some crushed cardamom pods.

Once the onions were getting soft I added in a couple of teaspoons of cumin, one of tumeric, one of ground coriander and a couple of bay leaves. When they started to smell terrific, a can of chopped tomatoes went in with a cup or so of lamb stock and sliced green chillies.



Brought it up to a boil then turned down and left it to simmer, just in time to catch Russia's entry, including the immortal lyrics "I lost my mind somewhere between your face". 

Go France though, seriously: an operatic singer at eurovision? Winner. I love it.

Italy, you have done me proud. Reasonably hot man playing a catchy song on a plastic grand piano, short instrumentals by an awesome trumpet player, plus end-of-chorus screeching. He's the Italian Jamie Cullum. Reminds me of my grandad, aw.

Oh Moldova. What are you like, though. Love you guys.

About now, my husband was kind enough to pop out to the kitchen and add the rest of lamb stock to the curry. By romania I was on my 3rd glass of wine. I needed it.

By Azerbaijan I was already thinking about my fourth. They are usually the highlight of the contest but this year's low grade, standard pop offering was a theatrical disappointment. (NOTE: when I wrote this I had no idea they were going to win. Oh the trauma...)
Iceland deserved good voting just for the sad story, but they were actually alright. As my husband said: happy Mumford & sons.

Seriously, this tastes way better
than it looks in my photo!

Anyway, when the curry tasted done, I added a load of chopped coriander, some lemon juice and lots of seasoning.
We ate it with warm, wholemeal pitta breads and some leftover rice, whilst enjoying Georgia's 2Unlimited style offering. Especially the "unusual" dress. 
Interesting fact: Georgia have basically the same flag as ours and share our patron saint. They had a king called George the Brilliant.

I voted for Italy. But it was a close decision: France, Iceland and Moldova all got serious consideration. Italy came second in the end, I'm not too upset about that, but seriously... Azerbaijan's song. Really? There's no way that was better than Italy's entry!