Courgette Risotto - Wendy's recipe, Wendy's allotment veg!

This recipe is stolen from my mother in law. She cooked it for us a few weeks ago and I loved it. As she has given us some vegetables from her allotment (including very big courgettes/marrows) I decided to cook it for us last night and use up some of the glut. I have changed the recipe slightly to our taste.

Ingredients to serve 2:
1 tbls oil
1 small onion
1 small leek
1 stick of celery
150g risotto rice
4 cloves of garlic finely diced
A small glass of white wine
1 litre of stock (either home made or stock cube, chicken or vegetable)
zest of half a lemon
A few stalks of fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese to taste (we used about 50g)
Knob of butter (about 15g)

(Wendy's recipe used a splash of single cream for a richer risotto)

• Finely dice the onion, celery and leek and start to saute in a large frying pan with the oil.

• Cut the courgette into roughly 1cm chunks (with the marrow I discarded the seeds) and add to the softened vegetables in the pan and continue to saute.
• Warm up stock in a saucepan or make up a stock cube with boiling water.
• Add the rice and the garlic to the frying pan (that is still on the heat) and stir around until the garlic becomes aromatic.
• Add the wine and let it sizzle away for a few minutes

The wine I used, it was just a bit left over in the bottle from another day.

• Add a ladle full of stock and allow that to be boiled away and absorbed by the rice.
• When the risotto starts to dry out add another ladle of hot stock and stir every few minutes.

• Keep doing this until the rice is al dente (this takes about 15-20 minutes) which means it is cooked but still has some bite to it (not mushy)
• Add the lemon zest, butter and parmesan, stir around and season to taste.
• Risotto should be served moist, we added more parmesan and fresh ground black pepper onto the each portion.

We like risotto it is filling, healthy, versatile and often a good store cupboard standby. This recipe would be great with chunks of chorizo added to the pan before the onion, or you could replace the courgette with squash, add chicken, pea and prawn, the possibilities are endless and I suggest you just try with your favourite flavours or just what you have in the fridge!

Happy Cooking

xoxo