Paul’s had a difficult day dealing with 185 million emails and I’ve shouted myself hoarse at some twat in a BMW who seemed to think the 70mph limit was 40mph too fast and thus trundled along in front of me reading his phone, so it’s straight to the recipe (as promised). We love risottos here at Cubs Towers, and this unusual flavour combination couldn’t be more autumnal. Why the fuck have I started sounding like Mary Berry when describing my recipes? Good grief. RECIPE NOW. This makes enough for two big bowl fulls, and later, two big bowel fulls.
to make apple, mushroom and sage risotto you will need:
- 4 bacon medallions
- 2 shallot, sliced
- 100g shittake mushrooms, chopped
- 200g arborio rice
- 125ml apple juice (about 3 syns)
- 1 litre chicken stock (make by dissolving three chicken stock cubes in a litre of boiling water
- ½ cooking apple (peeled, cored and chopped)
- ⅛ tsp sage
- cooked chicken breast (optional)
Here’s the thing. Technically, if you’re following Slimming World to the letter, you should syn your quarter of a cooking apple. However, that, to me, is nonsense. If I was saying you should put a pack of butter in and not syn it, that would be wrong, but a nice healthy apple – and a tiny bit of it at that? Nope! Always your decision to make though!
You could easily use the chicken and bacon from our new Musclefood box, which has lots of those, and others, inside – click here for that.
to make apple, mushroom and sage risotto you should:
- heat a large frying pan over a high heat and add the bacon, cook until crispy and put aside on a plate. when cooled, chop it up into crispy bits
- wipe out the pan and add a little oil, reduce the heat to medium-high
- fry the shallot and mushroom for about 4 minutes, until softened and add the rice
- stir well until the rice is coated
- add the apple juice to the pan and cook until it’s mostly evaporated, about 2 minutes or so
- add 1 ladle of chicken stock and stir frequently until it’s mostly absorbed
- add the next ladle and stir again until absorbed
- add the chopped apple to the pan along with another ladle of chicken stock until absorbed, and keep adding stock by the ladleful until it’s all absorbed
- remove from the heat and stir in the sage
- serve into bowls, top with the chicken, bacon and apple slices
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Enjoy!
J