fennel risotto

Using up chicken gravy, feta, salad leaves, fennel

Yes, another risotto^H^H rice based dish. These are just a great way to use up vegetables and so forth, and I love the texture - real comfort food stuff.

The chicken gravy/stock was left from Sunday’s roast chickie!, and was a much thicker liquor than I’d usually use for a risotto, but was none the worse for that.

Chop a red onion, and slice half a head of fennel thinly.  Sauté in some olive oil and a knob of butter until they’re soft, then add 5oz of risotto rice, and stir it around until the rice is coated.  Then add 1 pint of liquid - I just made up the gravy to the right amount.  You can use water, stock, wine, lemon juice - whatever takes your fancy.  Add some salt and black pepper - remember that if you’re cooking with feta, you’ll need less salt; it’s very salty.

Bring to the boil, and cook on gas mark 2 for 20 minutes.  Then I added half a block of feta cheese that needed eating up, cut into small cubes, stirred it around, and returned to the oven for another 15 minutes.

The salad leaves were a remnant from a Riverford bag.  I put them in a bowl, and added - from our little herb garden - chives, lemon balm and some bronze fennel leaves;  I made a dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar and a splash of tamari.  Worked very well - perlmonger kept saying, as he ate it, “this is *lovely*”.  And it was!

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