Bacon & Brussels Sprout Risotto

Nobody was more surprised than I, when hubby suggested we have a Bacon & Brussels Sprout Risotto, instead of the planned Bacon, Mushroom & Sundried Tomato Risotto.

What did it for him, was the discovery of hordes of the little pale green beauties snuggled up to their stems at the bottom of our garden.  Now, as blogged previously, we've had a few sneak previews of them and he'd had a taste.  As a result, he knew that they weren't the hoary old tough brussels of supermarket fame and also knew that their flavour was really incredibly delicate. He also knows that they are one of my favourite veggies.

Now, the first and most important thing that I must stress if you are considering having a go at this risotto, is to be VERY careful of your salt content.  As the bacon, butter and stock all have the potential for high salt, it is very worthwhile using unsalted butter and low salt stock.  We didn't - and coupled with some bacon that was just off the scale for salt - it rendered the whole dish really very salty.  I could cope with it, but hubby couldn't and unfortunately he had to jettison his half way through.

Having said that, however, in my opinion this risotto was sublime.  Don't try to change the minds of sprout haters by serving it, unless you can find some tender, sweet, baby sprouts.  I can't help but think that because ours came out of the garden and have been caught while they are small and luscious, it made all the difference.


We've since had a brilliant idea, which I suggest to you as an alternative.  That is, we thought it would be lovely to have some roasted chestnut involved in the risotto.  Lightly crushed, the flavour of chestnut compliments both bacon and brussels sprouts and would, more than likely, be most unusual and quite delicious.


BACON & BRUSSELS SPROUT RISOTTO  (serves 2)


Ingredients :

350g back bacon, chopped
20 baby brussels sprouts, outer leaves removed
sea salt
250g arborio rice
2 banana shallots, chopped fine
knob of unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 litre hot, low salt, vegetable stock (made with some of the water used to blanche the sprouts)
pinch of dried basil
pinch of smoked paprika.


Method :


1.  Place a saucepan of slightly salted water on to boil.  Once boiling, add the brussels sprouts and blanche for 3-4 minutes, drain (reserving 200ml) and plunge into ice cold water.


2.  In a frying pan, dry fry the bacon until the fat has reduced and the bacon is beginning to turn golden.  Remove and reserve to keep warm - retaining some small pieces for garnish.


3.  Add the shallots to the frying pan and cook gently until they are softened but not browned.


4.  Place the butter and olive oil into a large saucepan.  Once the butter has melted, add the shallots and bring them up to a good temperature.  Add the rice, basil and smoked paprika and stir until the rice is completely coated with the buttery mixture and the whole is as hot as you dare.


5.  Return the bacon to the pan and add a ladleful of the hot stock.  Stir to combine.  The rice will absorb the stock, after which you should add another ladleful and continue in this vein.


6.  When the risotto is coming up to a simmer, reduce the heat and add the bacon.  Continue adding the stock, ladleful by ladleful.

8.  Once the brussels sprouts are cooled, drain them and cut each into quarters.


7.  When the rice is close to being tender and cooked, add the brussels sprouts and allow to heat through as the rice finishes cooking.


8.  Serve in warmed bowls with a little of the bacon to garnish and some grated Parmesan to sprinkle over.

Inflammation Factor (approx.) : +206 (103 per person)

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Keeping the planning straight in the face of many changes!

It all boils down to this .....

For once, there's a fairly good reason why this meal planning post is a tad delayed.

I put the plan together on Monday evening, as usual.  Then, that evening, I watched "The Food Hospital" on Channel 4 (all about using food as medicine), which reminded me that I was going to try to find the website which gave the Inflammation Factor for various foodstuffs.

Versus this!

Having done so, I quickly realised that a great number of the foodstuffs that I had been eating were right up there on the scale of "foods that are really bad for people with inflammatory conditions".  If you consider that both Polymyalgia Rheumatica (inflammation of the blood vessels) and Arthritis (inflammation of the joints) are both conditions that have contributed towards my current disability, then perhaps I needed to do something about it.

Hence, my diet has changed fairly radically - and the menu plan had to be changed along with it. Interestingly, it didn't have to be changed all that much.  I had planned to have Macaroni Cheese on one evening, which has had to be ditched, but otherwise everything else has stayed (pretty much) the same.  It's more a case of changing what I had for breakfast and lunch, rather than the dinner meal.  In brief, the dietary changes involve the loss of a great deal of carbohydrate and the input of foodstuffs with positive scores for inflammation such as mackerel (+465), chilli (+498), green leafy veg etc.

I've got to say, that although I am missing our oaty bread (-49 for 1 ounce), I am absolutely cock-a-hoop about increasing my vegetable consumption.  I absolutely adore veggies of all kinds, so to be "forced" to eat more of them is so far up my street that it's not even funny.

You may notice a change in the types of dishes I'm blogging about, but it will be interesting to see how that change manifests itself - if at all!

No doubt I'll bore you all to tears with talk of "Inflammation Factor" scores (breakfast today - mackerel & horseradish on toast - scored +350, for instance).

So, it's probably a good thing that I didn't do all of this until Monday evening - which was after we'd been to Macdonalds to cheer up a very glum Son & heir.  (It worked, he was much more cheerful after a "Big Tasty" burger).

Here's the plan for this week :

Tues : Macdonalds - Big Tasty burgers all round!

Weds : Prawn Patia, Saag Bhajee & white rice

Thurs : son - pizza, adults - Bacon & brussels sprout risotto

Fri : Chicken & Tenderstem® casserole with cheddar dumplings

Sat : Toad in the hole with carrots, swede & Tenderstem® broccoli

Sun : Roast gammon ham with baked Mozzarella gnocchi

Mon : BBQ glazed pork steaks with baked sweet potatoes and peas.

There now, doesn't really sound like "diet" food does it?  I would say that's because it really isn't "diet" food.  For instance, with the chicken casserole with cheddar dumplings - I will have more of the vegetables than the chicken and dumplings.  So dishes that might score a potential negative score, I'll just have more of the positive scoring elements.  Easy!

I was looking forward to making the Prawn Patia (which is an Anjum Anand recipe) and had sourced an alternative Spinach Bhajee recipe from a curry recipe book that we'd had for donkey's years.

In the event, the Patia was fairly successful but the Spinach wasn't.  At all.  Anyway, I'll leave the explanation of that for the blog posting or I'll be repeating myself - and considering I'm taking Cod Liver Oil capsules at the moment, that's the last thing I want to be doing!

Hubby had a mad rush of blood to the head on Thursday and, instead of making a Bacon, Mushroom & Sundried Tomato risotto, he opted for a Bacon & Brussels Sprout risotto!  This from the man who professes to abhor Brussels Sprouts!  Is it any wonder I get confused?

I'm afraid that again, this is one which will have to wait until its own blog post to be explained fully.  However, the fact that it is getting its own blog post should tell you that I thought it was remarkably successful.

This evening (Friday), we've just had the Chicken & Tenderstem® Broccoli Casserole with Cheddar Dumplings and it was really lovely.  Well done Jo Pratt for putting together such a yummy casserole dish.  If you're curious ahead of the blog post, you can find its original format on the Tenderstem website here.  You won't be surprised to hear that I tinkered about with the recipe a little bit!


Tomorrow is hubby's first go at a Toad in the Hole.  He's bought some lovely chipolata sausages to have in the Toad, as he has a theory as to the length of time a sausage takes to cook -v- the depth of the Yorkshire pudding batter.  We've even bought a new roasting pan especially for the Toad, such is our dedication to getting it right.


I'm looking forward to this one, as I am completely useless at making Yorkshire Pudding. It will be interesting to see how hubby gets on with it - and fingers crossed that he gets a lovely crispy, risen Toad in the hole.


As I said in my last blog post, I am opting for easier dinners on a Sunday for the foreseeable future.  As such, this Sunday I shall be pot-roasting a gorgeous piece of Gammon, which we'll be having with Baked Gnocchi with Spinach, Tomato and Mozzarella (instead of Mascarpone).  Both are simple "assemble, cook and serve" dishes which should go well together.  Hopefully, I'll be capable of getting from the kitchen to the living room this time!

I'm really looking forward to Monday's dinner.  Not because of the pork, although the BBQ glaze sounds really delicious - and I absolutely adore pork - but because of the baked sweet potatoes.  I'll be making chilli cream to go in them again and just know they'll be utterly gorgeous.


Now, as far as additional bits of cooking are concerned, in the pipeline for this week I have a recipe for a lovely Cream of Celery Soup, using some truly gorgeous Fenland Celery that was sent to me to try.  I find it completely bizarre that you can't get Cream of Celery soup any longer and wonder what the majority of the celery crop gets used for!  It probably gets sent abroad because us Brits are useless at finding uses for it - like so many of our fine produce.


Aside from that, I'm just waiting for Son & heir's birthday cake to be finished, whereupon I'll be making an Avocado Pound Cake.  Hopefully this will happen before the beginning of December, as I want to enter the Avocado Brotherhood's "Blog an Avo" competition!


Oh, and of course, I'm trying to find suitable things to have for breakfast.  Breakfast seems to be the hardest meal to fulfil without using carbohydrates.  After all, we get so used to eating cereal and toast!

Jonty is hopeful of a taste!

So far this week, I've had tinned mackerel & horseradish on one slice of toast - which as I said above, worked out to be a positive IF score even with the one slice of toast.  I also had a fresh orange, which bumped the score up a bit.  A spectacular success was the cherry tomato, parsley and chilli omelette (see above), followed by a Kiwi Fruit, which went down extremely well - although timing helps with that one. I tend to have my breakfast when I return home from taking Son & heir to school - which makes eating things like mackerel and chilli a lot easier.  I couldn't eat any of that, having just got out of bed!  Even a cup of tea is often a challenge, first thing in the morning.

If anyone has any bright ideas as to savoury or fruity (particularly citrus - but not grapefruit) items that don't include carbohydrates that can be eaten for breakfast, I'm all ears!

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