Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup short grain brown rice, boiled for about 12 mins

1 medium onion, chopped

3 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp anise seeds

1 tbsp butter

1 cup chopped rapini or another green

3/4 cup red wine

200g mushrooms, chopped

2 handfuls of walnuts, chopped

about 1 litre hot water or broth

salt & pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy pan and cook the onions until soft. Add the anise seeds and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are cooked and the onions begin to brown. Add salt and pepper.

2. Add the parboiled rice, mix in well, and add the red wine.

3. Once the red wine is absorbed, keep adding the hot water/broth, one cup at a time, mixing it in well for about 15 mins.

4. When the rice is nearly cooked, add the chopped rapini and the walnuts until the rice is cooked through and creamy. Add the grated parmesan cheese at the end. Taste and season again if you think it needs it.

For this week’s meatless monday, I made a quick weeknight pasta dish. I had a box of brown rice rottini lying about. Alas, there’s no tomato sauce. But who needs tomato sauce with some nice Tuscan kale and some mushrooms lying around? So I sliced the mushrooms, cooked in olive oil. When they were almost ready I added some garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and the garlic was cooked I removed the mushroom mix from the pan and reserved. I then softened some shallots on the same pan, added a handful of chopped walnuts, some capers, and a bunch of thinly sliced kale. I added a 1/4 cup of water (you could use wine or stock), closed the lid to steam the kale and cooked for a couple of minutes. Once the kale was wilted, I adjusted the seasoning and tossed it all with the cooked rottini. Yum!

The beauty of shopping at 4 Life is that produce change from week to week. This week the store was bursting with colourfull fall produce but the first thing to catch my eyes was the small box of fresh wild chanterelles sitting by the cash. I quickly snatched a few and began dreaming of what to do with them. I had a kabocha squash sitting on my counter since last week and a simple squash risotto seemed the idea pairing for these beautifully-coloured earthy mushrooms.

What I did

1. As with every risotto I make, I started by parboiling 1 1/2 cups of short grain brown rice for 12 minutes. I strained the water and let sit.

2. I then cut the squash in half, removed the seeds, and cut it into 1 inch slices. After rubbing the slices with olive oil, I roasted them in the oven (skin and all) for about 15 mins at 400 F until they were cooked through. I turned off the oven and let it cool.Boil about a liter of water.

3. Once the squash was cooked, I sauteed one small red onion in a couple tbsps of olive oil. Once the onions had softened, I added the rice, stirred until it glistened, and added about 3/4 cup of white wine. Once the wine evaporated, I began to add water a laddle at a time (you can also use homemade broth; I didn’t have any at hand)

4. White the risotto cooked I cleaned and chopped the chanterelles and chopped some garlic and a handfull of Italian parsley. By then the roasted squash was cool enough to handle, so I chopped it into cubes. The skin of the kabocha squash is edible and since it was soft enough, I left the skin on

5. When the risotto seemed 5 mins from being done, I added 1-2 tbsp of butter, seasoned with salt and pepper and added the squash

6. In another pan, I sauteed the mushrooms in garlic and butter.

7. I then mixed in 1/2 to 3/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese to the risotto, turned off the heat and sprinkled everything with fresh parsley

mmmmmm

I was feeling overwhelmed by work this evening and not at all inspired to cook. Since I haven’t made rice for a while, my immediate thought was to make a simple risotto. Alas, I had neither butter nor parmesan cheese but I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I did find some gruyère cheese in the fridge so I grated about 1/4 cup of it.  My first thought was to make a butternut squash risotto but once I opened the squash, I realized I had let it sit on the counter way too long. It was all porous and dark inside so I had to discard it. Luckily, I had bought some mushrooms at the market this morning so a mushroom risotto it was. But first I prepped the short grain brown rice to render it risotto-ready: I simply parboiled 1 cup of rice for 12 minutes, drained, and set it aside.  I had made a batch of a simple vegetable stock (just onions, carrots, celerey, parsley stems boiled for an hour) so I mixed 1 cup stock, 1 cup water, and 1 cup white wine to a small pot and let it simmer.

I pulled out my paella pan and stir fried 1 small onion and 3 garlic cloves in a tablespoon or two of olive oil. When the onions were soft, I added 1 tsp dried oregano, some salt & pepper and 250g of mushrooms, cleaned and chopped. I stir fried the mushrooms for about 2 minutes, incorporated the rice and then added 1/2 cup of the sock mixture. While the rice cooked (I stirred every once in a while), I felt something was missing in it so I roasted about 1/3 cup of walnuts, chopped them and set them aside. I continued to cook the rice, adding more liquid whenever it dried. Half way through (about 10 minutes in), I mixed in the walnuts and 1 tbsp tamari sauce. My vegetable stock had no salt, you might want to skip either the tamari sauce or the salt at the beginning if you use a commercial vegetable or chicken stock. Once all the liquid had been absorbed, I added 1/3 cup chopped parsley, the gruyère cheese, adjusted the salt and pepper and served it immediately. It was the best risotto I have made so far. It would probably serve 2-3 people so you might want to double it to serve more.