Beetroot Risotto

Veggie challenge or no veggie challenge: when it comes to midweek cooking, vegetables rule the roost in our kitchen. With recipes like this richly flavoured star turn for the humble beetroot, a source of recurring culinary nightmares during my childhood but now a regular dinner time guest, who needs meat anyway?

Ingredients (for 2 as a generous main course)

• 1 pack of cooked beetroot, cut into chunks and thoroughly rinsed

• 1 medium-sized onion, very finely chopped

• 1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped

• 1 pint of vegetable or chicken stock

• A good bunch of fresh thyme (to taste), finely chopped

• Approximately 150g of Arborio (risotto) rice

• Goat's cheese (to taste)

Freshly grated parmesan cheese (optional)

Salt, black pepper (to taste)

How to make

Start by chopping the onion. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan and cook the onion on low heat until softened. Add the garlic and cook on low heat until it is lightly coloured.

In the meantime, prepare the stock in a small saucepan. Keep the stock on low heat to keep it warm.

Add the beetroot chunks and thyme to the onion and garlic and cook together on low heat for a few minutes. Pour in the risotto rice, stir thoroughly, and pour in just enough hot stock to cover the vegetables. Keep the stock boiling on low to medium heat and stir regularly. Add more hot stock whenever the previous batch has been absorbed by the rice. In approximately 15 minutes (some varieties of risotto rice take slightly longer) the rice should be soft and ready to eat.

At this point, take the risotto pot off the heat and stir in the crumbled goat's cheese. Season to taste with salt and black pepper, stir thoroughly, put a lid on the risotto pan and allow to stand for a few minutes for the flavours to develop.

Serve with freshly grated parmesan, a trickle of olive oil, a grind of black pepper and some decent bread. You won't be disappointed!    

Normal service has been resumed!

And so, the vegetable challenge has been completed. Not a morsel of meat or fish passed our lips for a full calendar month, as long as you discount chicken stock, which I insisted on using for risottos for flavour reasons. As a non-strict vegetarian, I'm sure the occasional shortcut to better-tasting food was allowed, right?

I thought I'd be relieved, overjoyed even, to be able to cook and eat whatever I wish once again. Not so. Returning to carnivore ways has been a bit underwhelming. That burger that marked our return to the meat-eating ranks resulted in an excessively full belly, the bunny bits in a much-awaited rabbit dish turned out disappointingly overcooked; only fish, by far the most craved-for non-veggie item during the month of the challenge, has turned out to be just as delicious as I remembered. This could have something to do with the unbelievably delicious - if I may say so myself - final Sunday meal I whipped up during the challenge. A combination of two recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's priceless Veg Everyday book, the mixture of roasted aubergines with yogurt dressing and garam masala- and ginger-flavoured potato and spinach was such a richly flavoured, beautifully textured - yet still light - treat no slab of meat could possibly hope to compete. Apart from maybe duck legs with plum sauce.

The main reason for a slightly disappointing return to carnivorous ways, however, must be the loss of a challenge. During the veggie weeks, I had to constantly push myself to think of new ways to stretch what was a limited array of ingredients. As a result, I never repeated myself in the kitchen and, freed from the worry of poisoning someone with badly cooked once-living matter, finally whipped up the courage to experiment at the cooker. Now that I can draw from a range of trusty favourites, it all seems a bit boring: I know exactly what everything is going to taste like before I even start the preparation.

It's obvious: I need a challenge to make this cooking lark interesting. As such, I have a favour to ask. Please send me any interesting recipes you might have lurking in the kitchen drawers. They don't have to be complete how-to guides for making a dish: if anything, I'm more interested in hearing about interesting flavour combinations and unusual ways to introduce seemingly conflicting ingredients on the same plate. Red meat is pretty much permanently barred from our residence (roast pork in the winter and duck anytime notwithstanding), I have a lingering fear of mushrooms, and my better half can't eat more than miniscule amounts of tomatoes. Apart from that, I'd love to hear your ideas to help kick-start another bout of kitchen experimentation.

From the Mrs: The end of Vegetarian Month (hello size 8 jeans!)

I have to confess that during Vegetarian Month there were times when I almost fell off the vegetable wagon. Most days it was easy to sit down in front of a colourful display of vegetables, a giant aubergine or a steaming plate of root vegetable curry. I enjoyed it, but the real test came when I attended my monthly dinner club called The Intellectual Dinner Club. Just three days away from completing a whole month without meat I visited 'Discovery Bay' in Huddersfield, a delicious Caribbean restaurant which makes my two favourite Caribbean dishes to perfection: Rum Pork and Salt Fish with Ackee. I didn't know what to do, the temptation was too difficult to resist and was made even harder when Janne gave me permission to have a 'veggie night off'. But as I sat down and began to peruse the menu I realised that actually I didn't want to do it, I was happy being vegetarian; I had come this far and I wasn't about to give up now for a slab of pork. Instead I ordered two vegetable dishes, which turned out to be fantastic! The vegetarian menu was actually great and as my friends tucked into huge pieces of meat I felt completely satisfied with my plate of steamed Caribbean vegetable curry, I had no idea what kind of vegetables I was eating but the flavours were fantastic. I had done it...I made it to the end of the month, meat free and feeling rather good about myself.

But now here's the bit I'm sure you want to know more than anything...what did I get out of it? Well...firstly I got a size 8 pair of jeans out of it! Seriously! I managed to lose 1 stone in weight and now my bottom actually fits into a size 8. I couldn't believe it. I felt a lot healthier towards the end, the first two weeks I craved meat like a crazy woman but then that subsided and I started to crave asparagus and parsnips...honestly! I really, really enjoyed it...Janne got even more creative in the kitchen and cooked up some amazing dishes . Thanks to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, one of my last vegetarian meals was so good I made it last most of the evening, I wanted to take my time and savour every mouthful and capture every flavour because it was so incredibly delicious. Our food shopping bill was cut by about twenty-five percent, which I still think is amazing. What I thought would be just a month of eating plates of vegetables actually turned out to be an incredible journey and I've loved every minute of it. One of the things that kept me on the project was watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (or Triple D!) a cheesy (very meaty) American show I discovered on the Food Network. The meat and the sheer size of the portions made me feel like I could never look at a slab of meat ever again, it was disgusting and made me feel healthy and glad that I was eating so many vegetables...the sight of a vegetable or a rogue lettuce leaf on this programme would make it a rare and rather special episode.

So what's the outcome? The day I finished I rewarded myself with a giant chicken burger, chips, barbecue sauce and onion rings (a la Triple D.) I didn't feel guilty, it didn't feel wrong and I certainly won't be turning vegetarian but what it has taught me is that I definitely want to eat more vegetarian food. I won't be eating red meat again but then I never did really anyway.  Instead I'll be eating more fish, veggies and occasionally chicken. At the burger place it was the veggie burgers that I had my eye on the most, they sounded far more flavoursome and interesting than just a plain old chicken burger. After that I ate meat every day until the following Monday when I cooked (yes I cooked) vegetable kebab skewers and do you know what...they were delicious and just what I needed. Maybe I'll be able to wear those size 8 jeans for a little while longer.