Wednesday 13 August 2014

Zucchini Risini

When I am on holiday, and self-catering, I like to make the meals easy most of the time, so that I am not chained to the kitchen! On Sunday at Church, Gwen brought some huge courgettes from her garden [not quite MegaMarrows, but…] I put one in my bag to bring to Cornerstones. It was over 30cm long and weighed nearly 720g

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lidl risini

I had some risini in the cupboard [also known as risoni, or orzo] it is a rice-like pasta. So I looked up a few risotto recipes on the net and came up with this simple dish for our meal on Monday. I cut the courgette [also known as zucchini] in half and put clingfilm on the cut end of the section which was returned to the fridge.

  • small onion, finely chopped
  • olive oil
  • 180g courgette, coarsely grated
  • 140g risini pasta
  • 180g courgette, diced
  • 3 mushrooms, diced
  • handful of sage leaves
  • tbsp cottage cheese [leftover- you could use marscapone, or creme fraiche or similar]
  • 2oz grated cheese [I had some cheddar, parmesan might be more authentic]
  • 750ml stock [for once, I used a cube & boiling water]

METHOD – you need a large and a small frying pan

  1. heat a tbsp oil in the larger pan
  2. cook the onion for 3 mins, add the grated courgette cook further 2 mins
  3. stir in the risini, and half the stock
  4. bring to boil, keep at simmering point, stirring frequently
  5. stir in most of remaining stock, and half the mushrooms
  6. when the pasta is soft and most of the liquid has bubbled away, stir in the cottage cheese, turn down the heat
  7. in the smaller pan, heat a little oil, and cook the diced courgettes, mushrooms and sage leaves
  8. add stock to the large pan to release any bits stuck on the bottom, and the ‘risotto’ is creamy
  9. serve into two warmed bowls.
  10. spread the fried veg on top
  11. serve with grated cheese for sprinkling
  12. wait for compliments

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This really tasted good – and was followed up by a yogurt and a few melon slices to nibble.

The cupboard is full of orange ‘basics’ stuff, all delivered by the nice chap from Sainsburys at 9am on Monday!Zucchini Risini sounds much more interesting than Courgette Orzo

5 comments:

  1. Oh yeah... giant courgette time ! My brother brought me some of his. The ones in my garden are still growing.

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  2. I also have some of that risini pasta and using it for a risotto sounds delicious. Might try a chicken one.
    Carolx

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  3. I've got two of these bad boys to use up so this recipe has great timing! I don't have the rice-pasta though so I'm swapping it for instant noodles. Not sure how well it will work but I'm giving it a go lol
    X

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  4. This looks great and would have come in handy back in the day when we grew our own veg. Those sneeky courgettes would always hide under their big leaves and there'd always be one or two that made it into marrows! xCathy

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