PEA, BACON & GOAT'S CHEESE RISOTTO

After the success of my Crab & Truffle Risotto I wanted to cook another one and today was the perfect day for it. Poor Arabella was home from school with a terrible cough and sore throat and so needed to eat something soft and warming….plus she is a goat's cheese fanatic (her illness certainly hadn't affected her appetite)!

This is an old recipe of mine and was the first risotto I ever cooked and at the time I remember thinking I would "save calories" by using margarine rather than butter - what an error - definitely use full fat butter and lots of cheese!!

Ingredients for 4 people:

1 litre of chicken or vegetable stock
70g butter
1 onion, finely chopped
200g lardons
A bunch of thyme
400g risotto rice
150ml white wine
200g frozen peas
Salt & pepper
150g goat's cheese
150g Parmesan cheese, grated

Chop the onion and remove the thyme leaves from their stalks.

Heat a knob of butter in a saucepan and add the bacon, onion and thyme.

Cook for 10 minutes until the onion is soft and the lardons are cooked. While this is cooking, heat the stock in a saucepan.

Once the 10 minutes is up, add the rice to the bacon, onions and thyme. Turn up the heat so it almost fries.

After a minute the rice will look slightly translucent. Next add the wine and keep stirring.

Next for your exercise!! Add a ladle of hot stock and a pinch of salt and turn down the heat to a fairly high simmer. Stir and stir until the stock is absorbed completely, and then add another ladle, and then stir some more.

When there are only a couple of ladles left, add the peas to the stock and then add them to the risotto along with the stock.

Keep on going until all the stock is used up and the rice is soft but still has a slight bite. Season with salt and pepper.

Remove from the heat and stir in the butter, half the goat's cheese, and the Parmesan.

Serve with the remaining goat's cheese and eat as soon as possible while it retains it lovely moist texture!

Oh my goodness, this was delicious, so creamy but so fresh - peas, bacon and goat's cheese is a winning combination. For once I didn't even need to add extra cheese! Finally, if you are veggie, you can leave out the bacon and use vegetable stock rather than chicken. This is time consuming with all the stirring but very simple to make.

I am already looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow!!