Red Reign

The day after trying some new local cuisine in the form of my local town's only Tapas Restaurant I decided to try something new myself by cooking a tomato risotto. The weather remained muggy and the ground was still damp from the monsoon-like conditions that had pervaded the nighttime drive home from the Tapas Restaurant as I began by preparing five hundred grams of tomatoes.

Today's record to cook with was by a local band called the Seventy and it comprised of a cover of David Bowie's excellent 1977 song Heroes. The song is difficult to cover as the original version is flawless, however the band (whose bassist I have known for the passed 19 years after meeting him at the start of secondary school)  do a brilliant job. Definitely an act worth seeking out.

I cut the tops of the tomatoes and then boiled them for two minutes in a pan of water. After the two minute period was up I carefully removed the tomatoes from the water and used my fingers to peel off the now very loose skin from them and discarded the skin. I quartered the soft, fleshy and skinless tomatoes and fried them gently in some olive oil in my Le Cresceut dish with two bay leaves which served to give the tomatoes a sharp flavour.

As the tomatoes cooked I boiled two hundred and ninety grams of risotto rice until most of the water had been absorbed into the rice and the rice became soft. I knew it was important to soften the rice early on in the cooking process as there is nothing worse than eating crunchy, under cooked rice in a risotto. Once the rice was properly softened I added it to the tomatoes and then removed the bay leaves as they had served their purpose.

The juice from the cooking tomatoes and the remaining water from the rice created some flavoursome juices to cook the rest of the ingredients in and to aid this cause I added a quarter of a pint of white wine and half a pint of vegetable stock. I let these cook on a medium heat until the rice and tomatoes had absorbed them while always ensuring that there was enough liquid in the dish that it did not boil dry.

I added a pinch of white pepper and a teaspoon of chili powder and stirred them in. I find that chili goes very well with tomato dishes. Next I plucked ten leaves of basil from the pot I had grown on the window sill and after shredding the leaves I put them in the dish. The fresh taste of this basil was ten times better than its dried counterpart found in the supermarket and enhanced the already strong flavours of the food considerably.

After adding twenty-five grams of butter and melting it into the risotto I finished it by melting twenty-five grams of Parmesan Cheese on top of the risotto which gave the top of it a glazed look. The risotto did not disappoint and the rich taste of the Parmesan and white wine, always a winning combination, was kept in check by the sharpness of the chili powder and the fresh basil. As the weather remained warm I ate the risotto out on the back garden in the pleasant Sunday evening sun; an optional extra when eating a dish that tastes that bit better in the summertime.

A rich but sharp mix of flavours makes this Risotto what it is

Chard-tastic

The hot weather still hadn't let up and after an enjoyable recall to the cricket team in some sticky heat the day before I sought out something fresh for Sunday dinner on the last Sunday in July. The inspiration came from a recipe originating in Greece a country with more warm weather than this country; most of the time. The plan was to make a dip using some white chard that I had been cultivating for the passed two months. Chard is a vegetable that is often overlooked by many as it is not regularly available in the supermarkets and therefore the only exposure to it is likely to be if you grow it yourself.

The Chard looks very similar to spinach or lettuce when fully grown and ready to harvest and either the stems, the leaves or both can be used in meals. The taste of Chard is slightly less gravelly than spinach but less bland than most lettuce.

For this dish I harvested enough leaves to fill a small teacup and then covered them with boiling water in a bowl to kill any germs that wild insects may have placed on them during their time in the garden. Next I added them to a pan of boiling water, simmered them for five minutes and after draining the pan left them on one side in a colander to cool.

As I finely cut two cloves of garlic the rather dated drum sounds of Roger Waters' 1987 album Radio KAOS beat out of the stereo. The album was Waters' first after leaving Pink Floyd and is a typically ambitious work which deals with the negative impacts of Monetarism in the form of Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's Policies. Although the references to these long since departed leaders could make the album even more an 80's relic its concerns still ring true today albeit that they apply now to different world leaders.

After the garlic was dealt with I added it to a small bowl with two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of juice from a lemon and seven tablespoon's of fresh, plain Greek Yoghurt. I then added the Chard and whisked all the ingredients together until the Chard had thoroughly blended with the yoghurt.

I served the dip with some raw carrot, cheese and biscuits which the dip's fresh yet spicy taste complemented perfectly.

Culture clash- the freshly prepared Greek Style dip which was served with cheese and biscuits that most English of dishes.