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!