friederike's Reviews
3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title 
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Vegetables from an Italian Garden: Season-by-Season Recipes
By Editors of Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press - 2011
Very nice salad. I found that the serving size is a bit large if you serve this as a side dish; one chicory is enough for 2 servings, you can reduce the other ingredients accordingly.
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a.k.a. Risotto Margharita (tomato, mozzarella, basil).
It was quite nice, but could have been just a bit more exciting for my taste. I needed more stock (I only made half a recipe, and needed about 400 ml extra), but maybe it would have helped to use a slightly smaller pan. I also used the juice from the tomato seeds (peeled and de-seeded the (washed) tomatoes above a bowl, then sieved that stuff).
Edited a day later:
I made the second half of the four servings today. This time I used a bit more rice and consequently also a bit more stock; I also added about half a garlic clove, two extra tomatoes (resulting in about 550 g of tomato weighed before peeling and de-seeding instead of 250 g), and 125 g instead of 75 g of mozzarella. Overall, it was a little more interesting. It was definitely more creamy (mozzarella!), and although the garlic clove wasn't noticeable, I'm sure it also spiced things a bit up (everything savoury is more delicious with a little garlic added to the mix!). Next time I would even use a whole garlic clove, or rather two cloves for the whole four serving dish.
Edited 5 August 2017:
I made this risotto using my pressure cooker (see this review for how that worked), but also changed a few things. Main change: Instead of cooking the tomatoes with the rice, I chopped them into eighths (they were large) and roasted them at about 150-160 C for about 1 hr 15 min with just a little oil, and added them at the very end. I think next time I'll even cook 250 g tomatoes (skinned and deseeded) with the rice, and oven-roast another 500 g tomatoes as I did today. And as recommended the last time, I added two cloves garlic, a little fresh thyme and fresh oregano to the rice before/while cooking.
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Quite nice. The only thing I would really change are the tomatoes - next time I would use more, and I would probably use small ones, roast them first as described, and add them just a few minutes before the risotto is done. As it was now, the tomatoes disappeared into the risotto with hardly a trace.
It was difficult to taste the tomatoes and (though not quite as difficult) the spinach, because it was just a bit too salty, though that's always tricky to get right with risotto. Also, I had to add more liquid (possibly because I made only half a portion), and I used part stock, part water for the extra liquid - only water would have been better.
Edited a day later:
I made it again, this time using small tomatoes, roasted for 20 min instead of 10, and added at the very last moment - much better! I also used less stock and more water, and only added extra salt and pepper to the tomatoes, not the rice - it was still slightly salty, but not too much. Last, I used 1.5 times the amount of spinach, not removing the stems, and the amount was fine too. I noticed the stems a little bit, but not enough to make me want to remove them the next time.
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