Oven baked risotto ? easy peasy!

Just a quick entry as I have a bit of a back log – so many yummy recipes, so little time!

The leaves are changing and although it is a beautiful sight it is also a tad depressing. Each morning is a little darker than the last and another winter is stretching out before us – boooooo!! However one thing I do look forward to is the pumpkin harvest. Mum makes a great pumpkin soup and it is my all time favourite. Pumpkin is a popular food in NZ, especially as a roast dinner accompaniment but not so much here in the UK. Over the years I have tried to make pumpkin soup a few times but the pumpkins I managed to find were tasteless and bland That all changed last year when we went on a pumpkin seeking mission and discovered Crockford Bridge Farm and there we found the Crown Prince Pumpkin – now that is more like it! The perfect pumpkin soup pumpkin!

When we went to Hewitts last weekend for PYO I found a couple of Crown Prince’s in the farm shop and so this will be the first of many pumpkin entries!

Baked Pumpkin and Fresh Pea Risotto (courtesy of Tana Ramsay – Family Kitchen)

Ingredients:-

400g risotto rice

1 1/2 litres chicken stock

50g butter

500g pumpkin, peeled & chopped into cubes

12 slices pancetta, or unsmoked streaky bacon

Handful of fresh peas

250g grated parmesan

1 Tbsp flat parsley

Place the rice, stock, butter and pumpkin in an oven proof dish, cover tightly with either a lid or foil and bake for 30 mins at 200C.

Meanwhile, place the pancetta under the grill until crispy. Lay it onto some kitchen roll to absorb any excess oil.

Take out the risotto and remove the lid. Stir through, making sure to relieve any bits stuck on the bottom. There will be some liquid, but this will be absorbed.

Sprinkle in the fresh peas and stir through. They will cook in the stock very quickly (approx 3-4 mins).

Sprinkle over the parmesan, stir all through. This will now thicken.

Dish into bowls and lay pancetta over the top, either whole or broken into pieces. Sprinkle over the flat leaf parsley and serve.

Now James cooked this and so it is only appropriate that any additional comments come from him, here we go……

1. We used pancetta cubes and dry fried in frying pan and then rested on kitchen towel. Was then stirred through with the parmesan.

2. We used frozen peas so added slightly earlier.

3. We ended up adding about 15 – 20 mins to the cooking time as there was too much liquid left – we put this down to the heavy Le Creuset pan?

Bon Appetit! A great dish for all the family – Izzy loved it!

Most recipes are for between 4 and 6 people and there are only 2 1/2 of us most the time. Hence we often have a good amount of leftovers in the fridge. This works well for us as means that we can heat this up 2 nights later making a minimum effort dinner. Plus James will take anything in the fridge for his lunch.