Roast Vegetable Risotto (with or without chicken)

Ingredients

300g Arborio Rice

Chicken or vegetable stock cubes (I use Massel because they are larger and vegetarian, even the Beef ones)

200g pumpkin, cut into pieces

1 carrot, cut into large chunks

1 small zucchini, also cut into chunks

6 button mushrooms on the largish side or 1 field mushroom

*optional is 1 skinless chicken breast, diced

About 1Lt of water

½ cup of white wine

Salt & pepper to taste

2 cloves Garlic, minced

1tb olive oil for roasting

1tb olive oil for frying the rice at the beginning

150g baby spinach leaves

1 fresh tomato, diced

4 basil leaves or dill leaves, shredded./chopped.

Method

Preheat oven to 200C

Place veggies on a tray in the oven with olive oil, salt & pepper.

Roast for ½ hour or until done.

20 minutes into roasting the veg, fry chicken pieces in 1tb olive oil until mostly cooked through. Add 1 clove garlic and toss through chicken. Remove from heat.

In the same pan, add Arborio rice and toss until coated with oil. You will hear a popping sound when it’s ready for the water to be added. Start adding the water a bit at a time, until the rice is covered, stirring continuously. As water absorbs add stock and wine and stir until further absorption occurs. Once you can scrape the bottom of the pan and the liquid parts it’s time to add more water. Keep adding water gradually and stirring for 15 minutes or so until it all absorbs. Taste the rice to make sure it’s not crunchy. If it’s still a bit hard, keep adding water gradually until it softens. Once the rice is ready, turn the heat down very low. Make sure there’s not too much water in with the rice as if there is it will go gluggy and become glutinous. It should be dry but not hard, moist but not gluggy.

Remove veggies from oven and add to rice, stir in. When combined add chicken, remaining garlic, herb(s), spinach and tomato.

Serve. Save some for later or take it to work for lunch the next day =)