Shakshuka risotto…

 Yes, you read that right…it’s a mix of Middle Eastern and Italian influences in one bowl of lovely! 

I don’t eat rice very often, but when I do, I want it to be luscious fat sticky grains. I am inspired by a dish of ‘chorizo rice’ that my very beautiful Spanish sister in law makes, and that my equally gorgeous niece and nephew eat with gusto; the rice is so packed full of flavour and so sticky and gorgeous, but alas, also full of chorizo, which I don’t eat. So here is a kind of answer..smoked paprika and cayenne pepper emulate the flavours of the chorizo perfectly. This is perfect for those of you in the cold parts of the world right now.. 

 Ingredients 

2 large banana shallots/medium red onion, chopped 

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 long red peppers, chopped

1 x 400g can tinned chopped tomatoes

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

250g arborio rice

Salt & pepper to taste 

Boiling water as needed/stock 

Optional extra: 3-4 tablespoons nutritional yeast 

 Method

Heat your choice of oil in a large pan and start by softening the shallots/red onions over a medium/low heat. 

After 5-10 minutes, when your shallots/red onions look like they’ve started to cook well, add the garlic and cook for a minute or so.

Then add the red peppers and cook it all for a few minutes to ensure that the peppers are also getting cooked. 

Add all of the spices, stir them all through the vegetables and cook for a minute.

Add the tinned tomatoes and season and let it all cook and come together for 5-10 minutes.

That’s your shakshuka sauce. You could now keep the sauce and eat it with eggs and/or added sausage of some sort. 

Or…as I did…pour in a pile of arborio rice and see what happens! 

I can’t tell you exactly how long it took for the rice to be cooked but all I did was keep checking it, stirring every so often, and adding water as it looked like it was needed. 

During this time I added some nutritional yeast; I had recently been gifted some to try so I thought I’d see what it was like. It added a nice slight cheese flavour, but it would also have been good without it.  

How wonderfully sticky does that look??? 

This was so good, the day it was cooked, and for the next three days! Hot or cold it was good 🙂 

So, who fancies a bowl? It’s worth the journey 🙂
If you’ve got great piles of snow, please stay safe xx