My ‘Huge Amounts’ of Black Pepper Risotto and Tales from a Very Hot Kitchen!

I thought that as we had reached a sort of midway point in the summer I would publish a few pictures of some of the food we have been working with and eating in this VERY HOT kitchen of mine. It’s hot because of the Aga, which we love and adore, but just because we love and adore it that doesn’t meant that when one of sits in the chair right next to it we don’t suddenly start to sweat profusely and feel like we have food poisoning!!

A few of you have asked me what the dessert with the strawberries is at the top of this post.You say that it looks like Eton mess. You’d be right, it is a type of Eton Mess. But it was while I was preparing it in the kitchen that I lost confidence in the fact that Eton Mess is in fact a FINE dessert and began to frantically look around for something to add to a perfectly good recipe.

I’m standing there in my kitchen, next to the Aga getting hot AGAIN, crumbling meringue in my hands (!!!!!) and trying to sprinkle it artistically on to the plate when I had the dreaded “this is too easy, it has to be harder than this” thought. Instead of leaving a tried and tested recipe alone I went into the pantry and grabbed a jar of Hotel Chocolat drinking chocolate sprinkles. The fact that they were orange flavoured drinking chocolate sprinkles made me truly believe that this ‘light dusting’ would work.

And by ‘eck it did!!!

I mean, I didn’t see anyone put a spoonful of the dessert in their mouths, chew like they had a bee on their spoon and then politely bring a napkin up to their mouths and spit into it, but I LOVED IT!!!

We’ve also been squeezing a fair few lemons around these parts. Let me say, you may know this already, but there is a reason that the kitchen cleaning product people put a lemon fresh scent in to all of their products. Of course their synthetic version doesn’t smell one bit like the real thing, but apart from being able to clean, lemons smell like yellow blobs from heaven when being squeezed in the kitchen. You WANT to be able to bottle it and sell it or at least bottle it and SMELL it!

Robert the Husband made some freshly squeezed orange juice on Saturday morning. Again this made the hot kitchen smell divine but not as good as my lemons did.

I took a picture of the orange skins after he’d been to work on them with the juicer. He’d put them in this neat little arrangement and the sun was coming in the window and lighting them up like a random tower that you’d expect to see being built in the City of London under the guise of ‘Taking the City Forward’!!!

I love, love, love Saturday mornings like this as they are rare and relaxed so I began to snap away at the romantic looking orange construction.

And then I downloaded the pictures to my computer.

Dude, look at my windows. O.M.G.

We jet-washed the terrace so I can see why they got like that but thank the lord for sunlight……..I suppose.

*Humph*

A lot of corn has been eaten too. I love eating corn but find it very hard to eat it while around other people.

Why?

Because the noise they make drives me crazy.

We have been growing corn here too and I’ll show it to you once it’s all nice and ready. I did a test patch of corn to see how it would fare and it did well. We intend to grow lots more next year.

Have any of you guys ever grown corn?

Washing Drying on the Aga - Cherry Menlove

So here is the hot beast with some washing on it on a relatively cool and wet day when the washing couldn’t go outside. I do love you Aga, I just can’t be around you right now. I’ll see you in the autumn when you’ll be my best friend and cook legs of lamb and shoulders of pork the way they are meant to be cooked.

Loads of Black Pepper & Broad Bean Risotto - Cherry Menlove

And of course we’ve had a glut of broad beans to get through. It’s THE BEST high to grow something and have it turn out the way it should. It’s even better to have a few battles along the way that make you feel like you’re a vegetable growing heroine that has an army of black-fly to eradicate.

The dish above is a simple, bland risotto. Made creamy by sirring in grated Parmesan at the end of the cooking process immediately before serving and helpful in that it gave me the chance to use some more of the broad beans.

Did I tell you that I grew the beans myself and that we had a ‘glut’ of them. I’ve always wanted a ‘glut’ of something. Yippee!

I also added some toasted pine nuts to the top of the dish to add texture. Risottos can sometimes be just big plates of cheesy rice so I like to add a wee crunch occasionally.

However, the beauty of this dish is the addition of huge quantities of freshly ground black pepper. Just keep adding. You’ll find the right amount for your taste after about 80 or 90 risottos but always add more than you think you should for a risotto of this type. We often opt for herbs or spices but I think that black pepper has been lumped in the same boat with salt under the label ‘seasoning’. NO, black pepper needs it’s own platform to stand upon, loud and proud in it’s tastiness.

OK, I’m off for the day.

I have another planning meeting today. I had one yesterday too and anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook will know that the one yesterday was about ‘C’.

‘C’?

Yes, the holiday that lands at the end of the year and has a lot of “fa-la-la-la-laaahhs” in it.

Today’s is about some other finer details but this is a meeting that will stand us in good stead for the next 6 months or so. It’s no secret that things are…..er….AWESOME around here. This small homegrown website that I love is still a small homegrown website that I love but with plans and people who love it as much as I do. So it’s not just me talking to myself in my spare room anymore.

What this also means is that all of that organisational stuff I’ve been spouting on about for the last four years is REALLY being tested right now and therefore a meeting discussing the next 6 months is vital. I’ll always do a little dance before meetings like this as I think that they are fun.

Then put on my “I’m serious face” and head on in. That face doesn’t last too long. It’s too happy for silly faces like that!!

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