Recipe: Baked Bolognese Risotto (Gluten Free!)

Hello from a very gloomy, rainy, cold and locked down Sydney. Yep, we're in lockdown thanks to the Deltra strain of COVID-19....

We started our weekend with a COVID test (Jesse - thankfully he had my cold and not COVID) and by Saturday afternoon we found out we'd be spending the next 2 weeks in lockdown - and by Tuesday Jesse was thankfully working from home too.

There's no toilet paper on the grocery store shelves, but it seems people have learnt a little bit from the earlier panic buying because I was actually able to get everything on my grocery list yesterday (woohoo!). 

At our house, lockdown looks like working from home, heaters running constantly (it is SO cold!) , warm lunches and hot chocolate breaks.... and I thought I'd share one of our current favourite lunch/dinners with you in case you're craving some warm, easy comfort food.

This Bolognese Risotto is SO easy to make (no hours of stirring at the stovetop) and seriously delicious too.

So let me share the recipe with you >> 

Recipe: Easy Healthy Chicken Pesto Risotto

So, this weekend Jesse challenged me to a switched off weekend. What does that mean? No phone. No emails. No social media. 

I know what you're thinking, hold up a second girl, you've just posted a blog post. 

No, I'm not a wizard who can blog from my mind (though that would be cool) - my lovely husband gave me an hour of switched on time so I could smash out a recipe for you! See, I told you he was lovely. 

The purpose of the switched off weekend is, of course, to spend more time together. Actual time together not I'll sit next to you and watch netflix in bed whilst I madly type out recipe ideas on my iPad and spend way too long trolling instagram time.

A few weeks ago Jesse decided he was going to give up playing his video games on the weekend which meant we got to spend more time together and I spent less time mindlessly flicking through web pages or scribbling ideas in my umpteen billion and five different notebooks but this weekend he set me the ultimate challenge - and I have to say it isn't actually as bad as I thought.. 

I'm a bit of a social media addict given that I manage companies social media pages for a living and I run a blog which involves a lot of social media-ing and we have friends and family all over the globe that I can't just meet for coffee.

One of the things we've recently started doing together on the weekend is making dinner together!

Usually I do all of the cooking and Jesse just does the consuming but I've been getting to help me out more and more in the kitchen and he's actually found that he loves it. Risotto and Cornbread Bakes are two of his favourite dinners to make so I thought I'd share this delicious risotto variation we whipped up last night!

We've got our Lightened Up Healthier Basic Risotto Recipe (as well as our super scrumptious Healthy Boscaiola Risotto Recipe) already on the blog and this recipe uses that base, adding some deeeeeeeeelicious ingredients for a flavour packed meal.

So let me share the recipe with you! >>

Recipe: Lightened Up Boscaiola Risotto

Risotto is always something I liked to eat but never cooked myself. Why? Because everyone over-complicates risotto and I thought it was an impossible task that I certainly couldn't achieve.

You see, whilst I'll happily make an elaborate cake, when it comes to dinner I like to keep things simple.

It wasn't until earlier this year that I started experimenting with risotto recipes. The first happened one night when Jesse was working away from home. I was incredibly bored and it was 4pm and I had no idea what to do with myself so I decided to start cooking dinner - only it was too early to cook dinner so I needed to make something complicated and time consuming. 

So I decided to try out a risotto - only to find myself with a delicious risotto finished before 5pm. Hold up a minute? I thought risotto was supposed to be complicated?

Apparently not - and risotto became a regular feature on our dinner table. For the last couple of months I've been testing and tweaking and fine tuning my risotto recipe so that I could share the ultimate Healthier Risotto Recipe. That is, a healthy risotto that's lightened up, gluten free and so simple to make. 

But there's one thing that makes this recipe even simpler - the new addition to the SIL kitchen; our Cuisine Companion. The machine does all the stirring and heating for you and your risotto cooks away whilst you twiddle your fingers (or play games, as is what happens whenever Jesse is in charge of the risotto). 

The Cuisine Companion comes with a hugeeeee cookbook filled with recipes, however, the risotto recipe in the cookbook calls for almost half a cup of oil and a quarter cup of butter - definitely not what you'd call a healthy recipe. 

Most risotto recipes generally call for a lot of butter or oil, however, this risotto recipe uses just a single tablespoon of oil whilst tasting incredibly decadent. It's a recipe you'd never guess was healthy or so simple to make and one we keep making week after week after week. 

But let me share the recipe with you so that you can make it for yourself! >>