Moroccan Couscous

This couscous recipe was brought to you by the letter C and the number 1/2 (as made for one person):

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of couscous
Feta cheese
1/2 carrot
1/2 courgette
1/2 onion
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
ginger
cinnamon
cumin seeds
coriander
salt

Instructions:

Chop the onion into small pieces and place in a saucepan with some olive oil on a low heat. Chop the clove of garlic into even smaller pieces and add to the onion, along with small amounts of ginger, cinnamon, cumin seeds, and coriander.

Slice the carrot very thinly and add to the saucepan. Cut the courgette into little sticks (since they lose their stiffness more slowly than slices, so you minimise the overcooked-courgette-effect, which is the main thing that makes me dislike courgettes). Add the courgette to the pan and leave to cook for a minute or two, stirring regularly.

Now that you have a saucepan full of tasty vegetables covered in spices, we want to impart this flavour to the couscous. We do this by cooking it risotto style (see Mushroom Risotto below). First add the couscous to the saucepan and stir. Then add water little by little as the previous amounts of water are absorbed by the couscous. Couscous cooks much faster than rice, so you get the risotto effect of blended flavour in considerably less time.

Now cut the feta cheese into little squares. Put the couscous mixture in a bowl and add the feta cheese on top. Stir and enjoy.

Nutmeat Cheese Balls

A while back I bought a tin of nutmeat, on a whim. It was sitting in my cupboard for ages until I decided I should do soemthing with it, and realised I didn't even know what Nutmeat was for - beyond eating, of course. I stumbled across this recipe, which makes enough for about 3-4 people. I thought it was only ok, and wouldn't have posted it here, except that Matt really liked it - the only way I could convince him not to eat all the left-overs straight away was to tell him he could have them for lunch the next day.

Nutmeat Cheese Balls:

1 tin nutmeat (mashed)
1 grated or finely chopped onion
1 cup grated cheese
2 eggs
1 cup breadcrumbs
chopped mint (optional)
(Optional: Diamond Coat'n'Cook stuff)

Mix ingredients all together. Put in refrigerator to set (or not - either way works). Form into balls and roll in flour and gravy powder (or Diamond Coat'n'Cook stuff, which works goodlier, imo). Leaving them to soak up some of the coating and then re-coating them is also a good idea. Fry until golden brown.

Very easy! The hardest thing was mashing the nutmeat and trying to make them round...

Come on, post recipes!! I need more foods!

Mushroom Risotto

I've been meaning to make this over here. Maybe if I post it, it will help me to get a move on. Here's my favourite version as I used to make it in New Zealand:

Ingredients:
(for one, as usual)

Half a cup of rice
(Arborio would be best, I'm sure, but long grain white will work if you cook this for long enough.)
3-4 swiss brown mushrooms
(They're sweetest, though white or portabello or a mixture will give you something yummy, too.)
Feta cheese
Half an onion
Small amount of oil
Thyme
Pepper
Salt

Instructions:

Chop the onion into small pieces and add to a saucepan (not a frying pan) with the oil. Add a largeish pinch of thyme. Slice the mushrooms and add to the saucepan after the onions are just starting to go clear. Don't be afraid to use extra mushroom. Cook the mushrooms until they have gone limp, then add the rice.

Leave the rice in the saucepan for a bit until at least some of it is starting to go clear-ish. Now you must add water slowly, bringing it to the boil each time you add a little more and then not adding any more water until you are about to need it to stop the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The rice will taste the way the water it was cooked in tastes. You want the rice to taste like mushroom and onion and thyme, not like a weak watery mixture that had a little bit of mushroom and onion and thyme in it. So go slowly.

When the rice is well cooked (i.e. completely soft and starting to stick together -- this can take a while, especially with long grain, but it will happen, trust me), take it off the element and add some chopped feta cheese. Stir it into the rice mixture until it has all melted. Now add salt and pepper to taste. You now have something which looks like mulched paper, but tastes like mushrooms at their best, all sweet and nutty. If the disparity between looks and taste bothers you, I suggest using parsley as a garnish. However, by this stage, I'm usually hungry enough to just eat it. It's very filling and works well with carrot sticks.