Sunday, August 15, 2010

All about food, Sausage Risotto - A one pot microwave meal

This is an excellent recipe if you have extra zucchini/courgettes and it cooks in the microwave in the one pot.

Sausage Risotto:

1lb Sausage (I use English Bangers)
8 slices bacon
1 onion, chopped
2 sticks celery, thinly sliced
2 zucchini, sliced
12 oz (350g) long-grain rice
2 tbsp. tomato puree
2 cups (600 ml) boiling chicken stock
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley


Place the sausages on a plate and prick thoroughly with a fork.  Cook on high power for 5 - 6 minutes, turning and re-arranging the sausages once.
Place the chopped bacon in a large bowl and cook for 3 minutes, stirring once.  Add the onion and celery.  Cook on high for 4 minutes, stirring once.
Add the zucchini, rice, tomato puree, chicken stock, oregano and salt and pepper to taste, blending well.  Cover and cook on high for 13 minutes, stirring twice. 
Leave to stand, covered, for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, cut the sausages into bite size pieces. 
Stir sausages and parsley into rice mixture.  Serve at once.
This dish is excellent to freeze for another day.  If you want a vegetarian meal, leave out the sausages and bacon and add more veggies.  Oh and use veggie stock instead of the chicken stock.

You can use spicy sausages if you like food with a "kick," we don't so I like the traditional English Bangers, we get from Zehrs, they are the PC brand.

I picked the grapes last night, before the birds ate them all.  Over here on The Witch's Island is a how too on making grape jelly, which I want to attempt on Sunday.

I also got a few more raspberries, I hope to also make some raspberry jam on Sunday, finally!!
I picked my onions on Saturday night.  Am I supposed to do something with them before I bring them indoors?
All my potato plants are dead, so I MUST dig them up this next week.  I dug these up to keep us going through the week.

That was all the gardening I managed to get done on Saturday, as I was busy in the house.

8 comments:

MyBulletinBoard said...

Everything looks good, but those potatoes are a marvel. Wish they would grow here! I could eat mashed potatoes and potato cakes every day of the week and twice on Sunday!

Liz, The Republic

Unknown said...

Nice recipe! We have lucky with our potatoes this year, really lots of them, but other produce isn't as good as last year. I just brought my onions in, but I suppose it depends what type they are? Happy sunday! Susie xx

The Witch said...

Gill,
Great looking produce from your garden. It really is a sense of pride when you grow your own food from seed and then get to enjoy watching it grow, and then taking it to the plate.
We went to a u-pick raspberry farm and picked about 4 boxes which I froze for later use.( Raspberry pancakes)
Good luck with the grape jelly, I can hardly wait for ours to ripen you are about a month ahead of us.

MyBulletinBoard said...

What are English Bangers?

MyBulletinBoard said...

Got your note. I see they're sausages. I was just curious about the flavor. I found some at an online shop in the east that are supposed to be like the real thing . . . . . have a mild sage flavor, another a black pepper taste. A Lincoln-shire variety and a Cumberland variety. Trying to figure out if there is anything local that would be comparable in taste. DH already thinks I'm nuts for shipping my wheat in; if I start ordering sausages online I think he's going to have me committed to the home. We weren't born on the same planet. LOL

Ruby Tuesday said...

Those pictures are making me feel hungry!

Winifred said...

Thanks for the recipe Gill. Will give it a try for my husband and I'll add the extra veggies for me.

MyBulletinBoard said...

Well, I wasn't sure where I'd put the recipe and I didn't feel like looking, so I just winged it. Using up this and that . . . . . .but it came out okay. Not the same, but similar. Cooked the rice in chicken stock. Nuked the squash with onion, green pepper, and a couple of big scoops of tomato sauce I had going in the crockpot. Threw in a spoon of sage since I was using Polish sausage. Stirred it all up, and it came out fine. Thanks for the inspiration.

Liz, The Republic

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