Although I love to eat risotto I find making it a pain in the butt so this is a hack of a baked calasparra rice recipe from the latest Dish magazine (#72 June July 2017).

I believe this is a great no fuss recipe.
​It's that good old method of gently frying some onions, herbs & spice then plunking in the rest of the ingredients & the stock, bring it to the boil, turn it down to absolute low, pop a well fitting lid on, set the timer & leave it alone.

It works ! You may even get a crunchy layer on the bottom of the pan.
You can add anything you want to eat it with; we carnivores fried up bits of sausage mmmm

Ruchita LOVES mushrooms & garlic so this recipe was always going to be a winner.

A couple of notes about the ingredients I've used:

• The creaminess comes from cooking the mushies in butter & adding cream. I'm sure you could make it without dairy . . . . not sure what you'd call it tho . . .
• I've used portobello & swiss brown mushrooms in this recipe as they were cheap & abundant & looked the best when I went shopping.
• I used a 500g packet of gnocchi which I bought from the supermarket. This is the first time Ruchita has cooked gnocchi so I wanted it to be easy peasy for her. Feel free to make your own.  
• the 2 ingredients which take the flavour through the roof are thyme & white miso. 

Even tho it's winter here & the thyme in the garden is looking a little lacklustre I picked just a few sprigs from each of 4 different plants & O<>M<>G it's the best.

I've chosen to use white miso as I think it enhances the delicious earthiness of the mushrooms.
I think dark miso would be too overwhelming but if you try it, let me know how it goes.
Miso is very salty hence only 1 teaspoon seems ideal for this volume.

Forever Friends with Fungi x 

This month's recipe is straight forward, quick & delicious.

The flavour of these veges & chickpeas make it really easy to use this as a base to which you can add just about anything.
For lunch we added some egg & some spinach.
You could easily add it to cooked quinoa, or grains, to make a salad either with it without a dressing.

While I was drawing this recipe & thinking about what you could eat with it, I realised that with just 10 months of recipes we now have a resource from which we can gather ideas.
I introduced a little plain omelette to Ruchita in Jan 2017, gave her instructions how to cook quinoa in Feb 2017 & used a tahini dressing in Nov 2016.

In less than a year we have built a nice little 'mix & match' library of techniques & recipes.
How awesome is that !