Three Strikes, and I'm Out!

Hi everybody!  Firstly, apologies to all my loyal followers out there (yes all three of them).  It's been a while since I put something up here.  It's not that I haven't been cooking, I've just been extremely lazy (which should come as no surprise to any of you).  There has been many a cold lonely night spent staying up to watch the World Cup as well as a few strums on the guitar, which I am also learning how to play while I'm up here in the Horse-Ham.  And like my cooking, it is not going well.

Oh it was a week of tragic comedy, or comedic tragedy, or maybe just simply tragedy.  I made the bold and ambitious decision to attempt a few risotto recipes from Jamie's demonic cookbook.  Because they all began with the same risotto base, I decided to mix things up a little this week by making risotto three ways.

Prologue: The Risotto Base

Oil, butter, onions (expertly diced, I think I'm getting the hang of it!), white wine, aborio rice, and for some reason Jamie Oliver likes to put celery in his risotto base.  I'm not sure if this is usually done, but what the hell do I know?  I had been told that to get the right consistency for the risotto I needed to:

1. Cook on low heat
2. Add stock slowly, letting it all absorb before adding more
3. Keep stirring

Things seemed to be going well until I started adding the stock to the rice, then it just all clagged up.  It should have been my first clue that this was not going to be a good week.

Act 1: Asparagus, Mint and Lemon Risotto

With my base sort of done (and once again looking nothing like the pictures) I get cracking on my first risotto, which on paper seemed like a simple base with a few chopped asparagus spears and mint with a squeeze of lemon juice.  Being the stupid naive cooking amateur that I am I just did what I was told and threw in the juice of a whole lemon, which turned my risotto into a big, sour, claggy mess.  And by sour I mean eye-tearing, face-wrenching sour.  And by claggy I mean I probably could have used it to wallpaper my flat.  Quite the underwhelming beginning to my risotto adventure, and it wasn't about to get any better.

Act 2: Spinach and Goat's Cheese Risotto

So a day after my lemon risotto fiasco I tried my hand at a spinach risotto.  This one definitely looked interesting in the book, mainly because it was green.  I don't know about you, but green rice excites me.  I make another batch of risotto base, and despite cooking is slower it still turns into a gluggy mass.  And my spinach didn't mix in.  Instead it just kind of sat around the rice, making it more of a green speckled risotto rather than a nice uniform green.  The goat's cheese definitely saved the dish though, giving a nice sourness that cut through what could have been a very bland dish.  Still, yet another textural disaster.

Act 3: Squash and Sage Risotto

I left this one till last because it had a few more components to it.  Squash, cinnamon, chilli and sage.  Unfortunately they don't sell any spices here in Horsham so I had to buy the Masterfood's shakers at Coles.  I'm currently amassing quite a few spices, and yes, it's a good looking rack.  I also had to exclude a few things from the original menu, namely amaretti biscuits (because I don't know what they are) and marscapone cheese (because I didn't want to buy a whole tub of cheese for a recipe that only requires a tablespoon).  Again, I try to tweak a few things while cooking the risotto, and again, it just doesn't work!  Furthermore, my pumpkin doesn't really mix in very well so it becomes more like risotto rice surrounded by lumps of pumpkin rather than a nice smooth orange mixture.  It was not appealing, nor did it taste all that great.

Three times I tried to make risotto, and three times I failed miserably.  What cursed dish is this?  Not only was I making it wrong, I couldn't even figure out what I was doing to screw it up.  I didn't know (and still don't know) whether I was cooking to fast or too slow, too high or too low, adding too much stock or not adding enough, whatever!  I was feeling so disheartened and, I'm afraid, seriously contemplating giving up on this whole cooking venture all together.

After coming home over the weekend and venting my woes to all my friends, I came to realisation that I was trying to reach too far too early on my way to becoming a somewhat competent amateur chef.  Here I was trying to make risottos and giant pots of cannelloni when I can't even poach an egg or mash a potato.  So I'm ditching Jamie Oliver for the time being and going back to basics.  First on the agenda is potatoes, and all the wonderful things you can do with them.  I'm thinking mash potatoes, roast potatoes, baked potatoes, etc.  If you can think of any more let me know and I'll give it a crack.  I may get sick of potatoes by the end of this and will likely end up a big starchy lump of ugly, but at least I'll be able to make some good chats.

Epilogue:  Leftover Squash Soup

As the title implies, I had some squash and stock left over so I decided to make soup.  Jamie didn't have a recipe in his book so I looked one up on Epicurious seemed appealing.  It was then I discovered that soup is VERY difficult to make without a food processor.  I did my best with my spatula but the end result was a thick, lumpy, not-very-good soup, but at least it was tasty.  I may have overdid it with the sage powder though.  I'm just loving the new rack way too much.

That's it guys!  Again very sorry for the delay with the post.  I know how much you were all eagerly waiting to read the next installment of my cooking disasters.  Unfortunately it will be awhile until my next post because I haven't had any time to cook this week.  Some friends came up from Melbourne to visit for no particular reason and we went out to a horrible, horrible, horrible mexican place on the main street.  The combination of 'country town' and 'mexican restaurant' should have rung some alarm bells, but we were enticed by the offer of $6 margaritas.

And tonight was dinner at Greta's place.  Greta, my co-surgical intern here in fabulous Horsham, is also another great cook and let me help her make a bangin' lasagne with apple crumble for dessert.  It was awesome, though I may have eaten one too many serves of the apple crumble.  I may have even had a little vom on the ride home.

In other exciting news I'm going down to The Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld with my good friend Mali, who is also a big foodie.  The Royal Mail is described as one of the best restaurants in regional Australia and we are both looking forward to a 10 course degaustation that will no doubt blow our minds, our taste buds and our wallets.  All the details to follow in my next blog.  Stay tuned!