Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Risotto

Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Risotto

The next cauliflower recipe we tried was Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Risotto from the Jamie's Italy book. The recipe uses his version of risotto bianco with certain additions, most notably the pangrattato to sprinkle.
I have reproduced Jamie's recipe here - mainly for our own use since the book has you flipping back and forth between the cauliflower risotto and the risotto bianco recipes.

1.1 litres stock (chicken/vegetable)
2 tbsp olive oil
knob of butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Half a head of celery, finely chopped
400g risotto rice
2 wineglasses of dry vermouth or dry white wine
70g butter
115g grated Parmesan
2 handfuls stale bread (we used one gluten-free roll)
1 small tin anchovies
3 small dried chillis
1 cauliflower
Parmesan for grating
Chopped fresh parsley

1. Heat the stock. Break the cauliflower into florets and add to the stock. Put the olive oil and butter unto a separate pan, add the onion, garlic and celery and cook very slowly for15 mins. When the veg has softened, turn up the heat and add the rice.

2. Lightly fry the rice, stirring continuously. After about a minute it will look translucent. Add the vermouth and keep stirring.

3. Once the vermouth has cooked into the rice, ass the first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn't cook too quickly. Keep adding ladles of stock stirring continuously, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. The cauliflower should be softened by now so you can start adding it bit by bit, mashing it into the rice. Continue until the rice is cooked and all the cauliflower had been added.

4. Meanwhile whizz the bread in a food processor with the anchovies and the oil from the tin along with the chillis. Heat a frying pan with a splash of oil and fry the flavoured breadcrumbs, stirring and tossing continuously until golden brown.






5. Remove the risotto from the heat and add the butter, Parmesan and parsley. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 mins. Sprinkle with the anchovy pangrattato, grate some more Parmesan over and serve.

Once again, this recipe was superb. The cauliflower flavour coming through nicely. Using this much celery in a risotto was a new one for me, and as a well-known celery-hater (or I thought I was a celery hater until now) I was pleasantly surprised. Jamie's tip of letting the risotto stand seemed to work as the texture was spot on. The pangrattoto is something we're likely to try for other things as it added - in Jamie's words "an amazing kick". it was salty, hot, crunchy and was the perfect garnish.

Paella

Paella

Thursday night had Tim on a night shift, and my usual tea for myself is some sort of tomato pasta sauce, but everything recently seems to have been tomatoey, so I thought of something different. Paella. I used to cook this ages ago, and even got the Brother into the joys of Chorizo and into cooking this.

Now, this isn't strictly actual Paella. I don't use Paella rice (can't be bothered), or a Paella Pan as Mr Stein says you need. And I probably don't really follow the normal way of cooking it - Mr Stein says to just leave it and don't stir. This may work with said pan and rice, but really, not stirring is surely a recipe for disaster for whatever I cook. Maybe this is therefore a kind of savoury rice, but the flavours are Paella-ish.

I started by chopping an onion, half a yellow pepper and half a red pepper and fried them gently with a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic.
I then diced one chicken breast into small chunks and stuck that in the pan too.
I'll say at this point that I was using the biggest frying pan we have, as whenever I cook a rice dish, I seem to overestimate the amount of rice needed and the amount of food seems to multiply over the cooking period!

Next I add some sliced chorizo to the pan, I used about half of the sausage that I'd bought form the "Farmer's Market". Cooked this a little until the oils came out and things were turning the lovely chorizo colour. I then put in some rice. I used the normal basmati rice that we keep in the cupboard. I put in a smallish amount, then thought it didn't look enough, then topped it up. This is always what I do/my mistake! Stirred it a little to coat in the oil, then added half a pint of chicken stock into which I'd added about half a teaspoon of saffron strands.

This is where the tasting and adjusting happens. The liquid had disappeared, and the rice was not cooked so I added more water. Then later, after stirring, yes, stirring the Paella, I tasted it, and due to the ratio of rice to stock and other flavourings, it tasted of nothing. So I added another stock cube with some more water. After this had been soaked up and the rice was almost cooked, I tasted again. It kind of tasted like chicken stock. Whoops. So I added some paprika, which gave it a bit of heat and a some more interest. I then chucked in quite a few frozen peas - enough to make the colours look balanced as the amount of rice was dominating the amount of meat and veg. This is what I mean by the amount of food multiplying over the cooking process.


I then, at the last minute, tipped in the pack of cooked "cocktail" prawns. Since these were cooked, they just needed a quick stir though.

As you can tell, when it comes to this sort of thing, I don't really follow a recipe. Perhaps I should? I judge things on how it tastes and if it is balanced and cook it "til it is done", which can annoy some people!Following a recipe for this would mean venturing into the world of Paella rice, (even though I do use risotto rice occasionally) Paella pans, probably shellfish and maybe some crazy ingredients only to be found in Spain depending on who's book you are reading. And again, can't be bothered.

This met my cravings for something tasty and not tomatoey for tea and left plenty for 3 more lunches afterwards. (So maybe the amount of rice worked out well in the end). It was a little salty, but this wasn't really apparent while eating, only afterwards when I had an almighty thirst. Probably didn't help as I had gone back for seconds. Maybe next time we go shopping, we'll get the reduced salt chicken stock cubes, as we have with the veg stock as this could improve the saltiness. The flavours of the chorizo, prawns and veg all came though and I was actually pleased with how it tasted. Tim liked it for his lunch today too, so an overall success. Whether it is authentic or not doesn't really bother me. I do prefer this version of "Paella" compared to the type that you get in a well-known Tapas chain, so I think I will be reviving this recipe back into my portfolio. It will probably taste different next time since no recipe or strict quantities were followed, but hey-ho, that's how I cook.