I am going to give you the long story of how I came to make this risotto.

We order our groceries online and get them delivered and last Friday when they arrived, there was an extra loaf of bread in there that we didn’t order.   When I got home from work, I said to hubby that we should use it to make toasted sandwiches for lunch the next day.  We have a sandwich press but when we were growing up they didn’t exist and if you wanted to make toasted sandwiches, you made them in the type of sandwich machine that presses the bread into triangles and seals in the fillings like this one.  

We went online to see how much one of these sandwich machines sells for these days and found one on sale at 100% Electrical which meant we were out for a shopping trip on Saturday morning to purchase one.  We also stopped off at the supermarket and got a tin of spaghetti and came home and made spaghetti toasted sandwiches for lunch.  

Fast forward a couple of days and I am working from home and decided I fancied a cheese and onion toasted sandwich for lunch.  I only needed a 1/4 of the onion for the toasted sandwich which meant I had 3/4 of an onion left over and didn’t want to waste it with the rising cost of food at the moment.  I had also been reading the latest letter from my friend in Christchurch in which she mentioned she made risotto for dinner and I thought that was a great way to use up the left over onion.  This is a recipe I have made a few times using different veges/stock/cheese/rice based on what I have in the house so it is very versatile and a great way to use up veges that have gone a bit limp or the ends of a bag of rice.

So now that you have the long story, here is the recipe:

3/4 (or one whole) onion, finely sliced

1 clove garlic finely chopped or I used 1 tsp garlic paste from a jar

a handful of mushrooms, chopped

1/2 a capsicum, chopped 

2 cups stock (I made mine using chicken oxo stock cubes)

50g cheese, grated (I used Cumin Gouda cause that’s what I had but anything would work)

Olive oil

1 cup rice (any will do, I had some medium grain languishing in the cupboard so used that)

Put a generous glug of olive oil into a med hot pan and add the onion and cook until translucent, about 5 mins.  Add the garlic and veges (anything would work in this recipe) and cook for a further 5 mins.  Add the rice and stir to coat with the oil then (and this is where it could get controversial) add all of the stock at once.  I give it a stir every now and again to make sure it doesn’t stick and once all of the stock is absorbed by the rice and it looks nice and silky, add the cheese and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately and enjoy!  Any leftovers can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days and this also freezes well.