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