15 Minute Green Bean Risotto In Three Easy Steps.

To celebrate National Vegetarian Week, knowing how challenging  it can be for vegetarians to find diverse and tasty food to cook at home, that’s ready in fifteen minutes, I’ve decided to share some recipes.  Most of the things I cook are tried and tested favourites, that I make week in, week out, but some of them, like tonight’s, are spur of the moment experiments. First up, a delicious green bean risotto that’s ready in three steps, in fifteen minutes tops.

I normally make mushroom risotto, and I have to say, I’m pretty bloody good at it.  The reason I make it well is that I love it so much, cooking mushroom risotto is a passionate experience for me.  When you cook something you love, you add that little bit of a special spark.  However, I didn’t have any mushrooms in the house tonight (which very rarely happens), so I decided to use what I had in, which turned out to be green beans and Arborio rice.

INGREDIENTS:

• Arborio Rice (About two handfuls per person/serving).
• Green Beans
• Tablespoon of Butter
• Garlic (I used garlic purée)
• Mustard (Dijon has a nice tang)
• Sea Salt and Pepper
• Stock Cubes (Two per person)
• Boiling Water
• Cheese (I favour cheddar)
• Three glasses of white wine (optional, but it makes a big difference).

STEP ONE: Beans

Into a hot pan, stir the following: Tablespoon of butter, tablespoon of garlic purée, tablespoon of mustard, salt and pepper.

Stir the green beans into the mixture, which will come together into a paste.  Sizzle the beans until they are soft. I used them straight from the freezer, but thawed out a little bit, for maybe half an hour.

STEP TWO: Rice

Tip: The rice you need is called Arborio, it’s an Italian risotto rice.  Don’t try and use Basmati or pillau, it won’t work.

Once the beans are cooked and soft, stir the rice into the mixture.  It’s vitally important that every grain of rice is coated in the butter, otherwise it won’t cook properly.

Once you’ve coated the rice, you can pour the wine in, but this is optional.  While it isn’t vital, it does give the risotto a more delicate, shaper flavour.  After the wine, or missing it out, it’s time to add the stock.

Put the stock cubes in a jug or pan and pour the boiling water over. I find OXO vegetable, or Knorr are great, but the best is Bouillon.

Make sure the stock cubes are dissolved by giving it a good stir.  Once it’s ready, cover the rice and beans with stock.

Allow the rice to absorb the stock, while simmering.  Keep stirring, but stop and allow it to bubble up by itself every couple of minutes.  Once the stock has been absorbed, pour some more in.

You’re waiting for the rice to be completely soft.  Keep testing a piece, if there’s still a little bite in the middle, it isn’t ready.

This should take about ten minutes, perhaps a little more.  The main thing is to do it right.  Just keep stirring and keep having a little taste of the rice, until it’s soft.

STEP THREE: CHEESE

Once the rice is cooked, add the cheese.  You can either add it into the pan, so that it melts into the rice and becomes gooey and golden, or you can just add it into the bowl when you serve, so that it keeps a bite to it.  Either way is good.

I favour a trusty Cheddar, possibly because I’m not very adventurous when it comes to cheese.  You can use whatever you like.

I don’t grate it, just crumble it in, so that it stays in lovely, delicious, oozing blobs.

And that’s it! All you have to do now is dish it up and enjoy the fruits of your hard work (well, not very hard).

You can serve it with salad, roast potatoes, bread, garlic bread, anything you like.  Even just on its own, it’s delicious.  I enjoy mine best in the garden, in the sun.

I hope you enjoy cooking and eating this dish.  If you give it a go, please do let me know how you get on.

Happy Cooking, and HAPPY NATIONAL VEGETARIAN WEEK!

 

 

The Start of Summer Outfits

Dress: Dorothy Perkins, Cardiagan : Jack Wills, Sandals: New Look.

Flowerpot Dress: Utam London at Dorothy Perkins, Cardigan: Jack Wills, Plimsolls: River Island.

My Favourite Things This Spring: London, Trousers, and Moments.

These are the things making me smile this Spring…

1. London 

One thing I love, and it isn’t a new thing, but something I’ve been obsessed by for years, is when Londoners put ‘The’ in front of a road name.  For example, someone from London doesn’t just say ‘King’s Road’ they say ‘The King’s Road’.  I love anything which is intrinsically and traditionally ‘London’.  I love the people, the streets, and buildings, and parks, I love London as a living entity, and so I love anything which makes you instantly aware of its own metropolitan authenticity. It’s like music to me, that intoxicating London lilt; ‘Where did you see him, Bill?’, ‘I saw him down The Tottenham Court Road’.

This picture was taken backstage at a production of Rocky Horror, at The King’s Road Theatre, in 1976.  It embodies the King’s Road atmosphere and reputation for punks, theatre and creativity.

I love this quote, which I found with the photograph; “Back again.  This time, the first ‘West-End’ production at The Comedy Theatre, re-staged by the original director, Jim Sharman. It was only towards the end of this run that we noticed a strange phenomenon; American tourists who seemed to think they were part of the show  started shouting out stuff, much to their own amusement …

We just thought they were twats.”

The photo is a beautifully typical snapshot of unseen London life, one of those moments that happens with people who aren’t beautiful, aren’t scripted, but are alive in a room together, somewhere down a dark street in London.  This brings me onto my second item…

2. Moments

I love the moments in life, the moments that aren’t planned and often only seen by one person, or a few, which are breathtakingly beautiful.  I was on the train today, it was early evening, about five o’clock.  I was listening to The Cure, looking out of the train window at fields which were green, shining with the rain that had been falling earlier in the day, in bright sunshine.  The carriage was quiet and empty, and it was a beautiful moment.  I think I may have written about this before, but just in case I haven’t… Last year, early in the summer, I was walking the Dog, and I turned onto the Heath, just as the sun was setting, and I looked out across the fields of horses, and boys playing football, and the empty Heath, just as For Lovers by Pete Doherty started playing in my earphones.  I feel like a pompous prig for saying this, but that moment almost made my cry.

I recently wrote in a poem;

What about the English air
steeped in home-cooked chip fat
in late-afternoon sun,
and that place in the Colosseum
where every wayfarer stands to have their photograph taken?
Moments of well-worn summer
like comfortable clothes
in the quietness of a moment alone,
an outfit that no-one will see,
a minute’s picture-idyll,
the light catching the natural arrangement of blonde hair,
like cotton against your legs
that only you will feel.

3. Trousers

Being short in height and somewhat rotund, it isn’t easy to find clothes which are flattering.  In my head I look like a Jack Wills model, in reality I look like a Julie Walters character.  However, I recently found a pair of trousers which I like.  I always believed that I could only get away with certain things, and that I couldn’t go near anything chic or stylish, but these trousers are chic.  They were from Zara, around £22, which is a bargain in my eyes.  I love them, and will wear them all summer.

(I’ll add a picture to this Blog when I don’t have a towel on my head).

A Diary of Cake and Tea: II

These first photographs, with the brown and cream cups, were taken last weekend.  We went to a country house, somewhere in Cheshire, which I’m afraid I can’t remember the name of.  The house is surrounded by the most beautiful, sumptuous gardens, with flowers and lovely green lawns, and it only opens its gates to the public for one day every year.  For the rest of the time, the house is shut away, behind high gates, as a family home and television offices, but one day each year sees it opened to visitors.  Inside the house there were tables, set perfectly, and lovely garden furniture outside on the lawn, and some local ladies were serving tea and home-made cakes and scones, and sausage rolls (both meat and vegetarian).  It was wonderfully unusual and blissfully English.

A diary of cakes and tea.

It has been brought to my attention, by three separate people, that my family and I are forever eating scones and drinking tea.  Actually, it’s true.  A combination of two months of wet spring weekends, a mammoth festival of bank holidays thanks to Easter, the Royal Wedding, and May bank holidays, plus four damp days in Wales, have resulted in a string of occasions where we have found ourselves at a table, perhaps in a teashop or on a lawn somewhere, with a cup of tea and scone with jam and cream.  In fact, I’m not complaining, because it is a lovely, very British way of spending an afternoon, whether it be sunny or drizzling.  The teashops of these fair isles are a thing of wonder.

Spring started with a weekend full of picnics.  The first was a bikeride to our local Heath, and saw the début of the heart-shaped picnic basket I’d received for Christmas from my Grandmother.  The second picnic took us to Wales, the beautiful town of Conwy, for a small stony spot by the beach, surrounded by fishing boats and the wing of a dead seagull, which was only discovered after we’d eaten.

We celebrated two birthdays this Spring, both with Cake.  For one we  went for breakfast at the local teashop, and ordered Pizza in the evening, for the other we went walking in Derbyshire.  Both were lovely.  In our family we always make a special fuss of birthdays, and never let one pass without doing something special.

April 29th 2011 brought with it THE ROYAL WEDDING, and the country celebrated in true old-fashioned style.  In fact, I didn’t even have to verify that date, I just know it.  In our house we eschewed the children and beer ridden street party that our neighbours were holding, and instead had our own celebration, with cakes and tea, and dresses from Jack Wills and Cath Kidston.  We spent the night before making bunting, and had a whole day devoted to shopping for outfits and porcelain memorabilia.

We watched the event, glued to the screen, from start to finish, relishing every moment, feeling part of something special.  The only thing that momentarily robbed our attention, and only in the boring bits, was the food.  Chocolate cake, pink fairy cakes, strawberries, trifle, garlic bread, pizza, tarts and quiches, homemade pies, and everything in between.  It was a true feast.

We wanted to make it a special day, one we’ll always remember, like the wartime street parties and jubilee celebrations of our grandparents, and we certainly succeeded. I’ll always look back on it as a lovely day.  Of-course, we had champagne and lots of tea.

The Easter weekend felt like much-needed holiday, and with the bank holidays, and royal weddings, and days off, it felt like a long break.  We had a day walking in Derbyshire, with a picnic on the edge of a river, always entertaining with pensioners, walking along eating Easter eggs, and a sumptuous dinner in a beautiful hotel in Buxton.  Now that we have a child in the family, my cousin who’s almost two, we had a legitimate excuse to have an Easter egg hunt, something we’ve been doing for years anyway.

We hunted for eggs in my grandparents’ garden, on an unusually warm and sunny morning, and then we sat down to tea and cake.  My Mum had baked fairy cakes from scratch, and arrived with arms full of cake tins and Tupperware, and my Nanna made a typically eccentric chocolate cake with layers of cream and strawberries.

My Nanna comes from a family of master bakers, and was rightly proud, as was my Mum.

The past two weeks have been busy, with three beautiful but slightly damp days in Wales in a caravan, which gave us two opportunities every day to have tea and cake, an opportunity we took full advantage of.

For the record, I drink builder’s tea.  Medium strength, but with lots of milk, and two and a half sugars.  Any other way, and I can’t drink it.  Made properly, I luxuriate in tea, feel comforted by it, am taken to a higher plane by it.  I am so grateful whenever anybody makes me a drink and brings me an unexpected cup of tea, it’s a lovely surprise and kind gesture, but one thing I can’t stand is when someone makes you a drink the way they think it should be made, rather than how you like it.  The worst culprit is my grandparents.  They believe that tea should be the colour of mahogany, with a thimbleful of milk, and one sugar.  After years and years, I’ve finally succeeded in making them accept that I take more than one sugar, and they’ve gone up to two very small ones, but will never reach the full two and half.

There’s nothing quite like sheltering from the rain on a cold day, or stopping off on the way home after a long journey in a cramped, packed-up car, for a nice cup of tea and some sandwiches and cake.  Better yet, a lasagne.

I’m actually in love with tea and cake, I’ve just realised that.

These last few pictures were taken at The Davenport Tea Room, at Acton Bridge in Cheshire. http://www.davenportsflorists.co.uk/tearooms.html  It’s down a tiny lane, signposted opposite Marco Marco and The Leigh Arms, and is well worth a visit.  In a beautiful old farmhouse, with antique tables and exquisite china, they have a wonderful menu and the perfect atmosphere.

All this writing about tea, I’m gasping for a brew!

The fine line between sympathy and condemnation for the McCanns

Feeling no sympathy whatsoever for the parents of Madeleine McCann will not be a way of making myself very popular, but hearing Kate McCann talking this week about how she thinks someone tried to abduct Madeleine the night BEFORE she was actually left alone to be taken from her bed, fills me with disgust rather than compassion.

As a woman, I put myself in the position of a mother and find it impossible to understand how this woman could leave a young child and two babies in their beds, in a hotel room in a foreign country, while she went out with friends, not once but repeatedly.  Not only this, but she already had the suspicion that someone had been in the room and tried to take the children the previous night.  How can one feel sorry for her?  Kate told the press this week, on Madeliene’s eighth birthday, that on the morning the abduction happened Madeliene had asked why her mum and dad didn’t come straight to the children’s room when they were crying the night before.  ’I never thought for one minute that there was something sinister’ is what she said, ‘I just worried, had she woken up and nobody had been there? But obviously, when we discovered she’d gone, it just seemed very likely to me that in fact, somebody had maybe tried the same thing the night before and had been disturbed, maybe when the children started screaming. There was something about it that just didn’t seem right.’

Meanwhile, Gerry McCann seems almost dismissive of their own responsibility for their children; ‘Who’s thinking about child abductions in a little sleepy out-of-season tourist resort? It never entered our minds. We felt very safe – it was a family resort.’

I’m not a parent yet myself, but I don’t know how anyone could feel like that, let alone say those words after their child had been kidnapped while they drank and ate a meal with friends.  How can you ever be off-duty when it comes to your children?

It fills my stomach with an uneasiness to hear it.  The whole world is expected to be moved to tears with compassion for this woman, this mother, because she’s lost her child, but where my sympathy lies is with a little girl who was left alone in a room, taken by a stranger, and then who knows what happened to her?  The fact that that little girl was probably crying for her parents, frightened, and then has potentially been through the most unbearable ordeal subsequently, is a tragedy.  When I see Kate McCann crying on the news, clutching Madeleine’s cuddly cat, I don’t feel moved; I feel revulsion.

And, of-course, these new interviews and statements are not merely in honour of Madeleine’s eighth birthday.  The McCanns have a new book to promote.  With the title Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, and with the words; ‘All proceeds donated to Madeleine’s fund’ (which presumably means the McCann’s bank account) on the front cover, the book is the latest publicity stunt in a long line.  My less cynical self thinks that any mother in that position, myself included, would want to draw as much attention as possible to their missing daughter’s plight.  However, I’m inclined to think that the attention the McCann’s solicit isn’t necessarily in Madeline’s interest alone.

Many online commentators and blogs have expressed the view that the book will do little to actually find Madeleine, and that the price has already been reduced by half by Waterstones and other major retailers.  There are many sceptics willing to broach the feeling that all is not right with the McCanns, and I tend to agree with them.  After the initial welling up of empathy for the family, and the concern for a missing girl, cracks began to appear in the apparently perfect tragedy; none less than the McCann’s hire car, where blood was found.

I haven’t been able to make my mind up about the McCann’s, and I don’t really want to until we have real information and evidence about what happened, because none of us really knows one way or the other, what happened to Madeleine.  From the first day the news story broke,I’ve always felt concern for Maddie, but have never been able to overcome a certain uneasiness about the parents.  Whenever I look at them, or read statements they’ve made, I can never make myself forget a nagging feeling that something isn’t right.

I think it started with what Kate apparently said when she ran down back down to the Tapas bar, after finding her daughter gone.  I can’t track down the exact quote, but I remember clearly from the media at the time, what she cried out was; ‘They’ve taken her, they’ve taken her.’  Now, to me, this feels odd.  Firstly, the use of ‘they’ implies that there is a specific person in her mind.  Speaking speculatively, I would imagine that were I in that situation myself, I would be more inclined to say; ‘Someone’s taken her’, rather than ‘they.’  Who are ‘they’?  It doesn’t feel right.

I’ve always held the view that they had something to do with it, which was made all the more plausible in 2007, when the McCanns first offered to take a polygraph test, or lie detector test, as a publicity exercise to prove their innocence, and then staunchly refused when the moment came.  What would Jeremy Kyle say?  If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

Of-course, this is only my own opinion and gut feeling, but instincts often turn out to be right on the money.  My only hope is that Madeleine is somewhere safe, and hasn’t been harmed.  For a little girl to suffer would be horrific.

I have a thing for clothes and flowers

Okay, it’s probably fair to say that it’s an obsession.  I love seeing clean washing blowing in the wind, and wild flowers, and the sun in the garden, and the green of the grass.  Over the Winter it’s necessary to dry your washing on radiators or maidens, indoors, with the heating on.  Once or twice, this Winter, I did put my washing out, and went to retrieve it a couple of hours later to find it frozen solid.  I even put some washing out when the garden was thick with snow, because I needed clean bedding.  However, when Spring comes we can hang clothes and sheets and white fluffy towels outside in the sun.  It’s a fact that sunshine is good for washing, it’s salubrious and somehow healthy, not to mention it dries it really well.  In the Spring and Summer there is a beautiful satisfaction to working hard all morning; sorting and piling and hauling clothes downstairs, washing them, putting them in a basket and carrying the heavy load outside, then to watch them blowing elegantly on the line, delicate rays of sun shining between them.  It is one of the greatest pleasures in life, in my life anyway.

The sight of washing in afternoon sunlight is so incredible to me, and so comforting, that I’m often compelled to photograph it, or write it into a poem, simply because I want to preserve the moment; I need evidence.  I feel that if I just tell people how beautiful it is, they won’t believe me.  I have a compulsion to fossilise and treasure the aesthetic, the feeling.

I recently wrote the line; ‘White towels blowing in the heather chives,/wild and purple where you planted them’, in a poem about the people in my life that I’ve lost, in particular my Grandad, who planted the chives.  I wanted to make the sight that I could see from the kitchen table as I was writing become part of the poem.

This is probably very boring to almost everyone else in the world, but just in case, here are some of these moments.

Does posting make me undignified? The Poetry Dilemma!

I didn’t grow up in a household where poetry was ever read, discussed, or even acknowledged.  When I eventually, at the age of twenty-three, told my mother that I wanted to be a writer, and do it seriously, her first words were; ‘Get your head out of the clouds.’  Although I might appear unduly self-confident, even self-important sometimes, I’m actually not.  I do have confidence in myself, and I’m sure of who I am, but when it comes to facing the world I’m all too aware of my shortcomings and awkward little flaws, which make me a bit of a twat.  I realised, a couple of years ago, that if you  pretend to be more confident than you are, and just assert yourself into life’s little situations and conversations, people will accept you for your flaws, rather than thinking you’re weird for them.  Therefore, when it comes to writing, I am absolutely torn.  One half of me wants to hold my words to my chest and protect them like a child, but what would be the point in that?  You see, the other half of me wants to share them.  I don’t want to send them into the void for people to read them so they can be impressed by them and think how wonderfully talented I am, or to receive comments telling me how brilliant my piece of work is.  What I want is feedback.  A person’s honest opinion means more to me than all the patronising, sycophantic cooing under the sun (not that I ever get any).  This week I posted an old poem on my blog.  Because my blog is linked to Twitter and Facebook, a friend from my creative writing class read the poem.  This lad is an exceptional writer.  He’s intelligent, hilarious, sharp-witted,  and brilliant.  When he’d read this poem, which I feel is juvenile and unsophisticated, as it was written two years ago when I’d only just stopped writing poems called things like;  ’In Lord Harry’s Lair’, he told me it was ‘great’.  I made some modest, demure comment in reply, about it being an old poem and not very good, and his reply was ‘Your honesty makes me smile. I enjoyed it, laziness not being a factor.’  These few words meant so much to me, and lit me up for the whole day.  To know that somebody, a person I respect, and who knows what they’re talking about, has taken the time to read something I’ve written, and actually enjoyed it, makes me incredibly happy.

My dilemma is; does posting poetry online make me a knob?

As a writer, should I humbly squirrel my words away, and hide them from the world?  Do I devalue myself and my work by whoring it over the internet?  I want to retain integrity and modesty, and to deserve respect, but I want people to read what I’ve written, so that I can know whether it’s any good.  Because, when it boils down to it, I don’t actually know whether it’s good.  I have a fear that I’m sending these things into the world, these little pieces of myself, which is what they are, and people are reading them and grimacing with embarrassment for me, at how awful they are.  (Please note, if I ever write anything that makes a reader cringe, please tell me, I really would rather know).  Of-course, I don’t share everything I write, a lot of it is private or ‘work in progress’, but of the few things I do share, I would like to know how people feel about them, be it good or bad.  As I’m not likely to be paid a nice sum of money to print my poems in the Times Literary Supplement any time soon (yes, this is one of my dreams), the best and only way I have of getting feedback on my work from people who love and care about poetry, is to share it on the internet.  When my Mother or Grandmother read my work, they’ll tell me it’s very good, and smile at how nice it is (with the exception of one poem (which was actually published in a very well respected literary journal), which my Nan felt was derogatory to the working class), but I want the opinion of other writers, people like the friend from my writing class (who may not be a friend any more if he reads this blog).

What’s your answer, dear Void?  Does it make me look desperate and deluded to scrawl my work online?  Should I continue sharing it, hoping for honest opinions, or hide it away to maintain integrity?  In truth, if work stays bound in a notebook, and I know no-one has ever, or will ever read it, I feel a burning frustration.  Anything I write is an expression, and a release of how I feel, and if I shut it away, and bottle it up, I feel as though I’m caging an animal.  It’s somehow soothing to know that someone, somewhere, might read a poem and smile.  Likewise, if something is terrible, I want to know.  I find it impossible to judge my own work.  I can read something I’ve written and think it’s the work of a genius, then five minutes later hate myself because it’s actually appalling. It’s helpful for people to make suggestions, and give an opinion that I can trust.

I suppose my fear is that I will devalue what I’m writing.  I don’t want to appear like a teenager writing poems about a crush, and posting them for the world to see.  Some of the poems I’ve written have been in journals, which means they’re already publicly accessible, but I’m worried that putting them on a blog will cheapen them.

Also, I don’t want to appear as though I think each poem is the best thing ever written, and they’re small gems of ingenious that you should all behold and marvel at, admiring my prowess, then tell me how brilliant I am.  The main reason for posting a piece of work, for me, is that I’m unsure.  I have a feeling that by making something public, it will appear to the outside world as though I’m saying ‘here it is’ and showing it off proudly.  This isn’t the case.  Yes, I feel an attachment to my writing, because it’s so personal, and I suppose that in a way I’m proud of it because I know how hard I’ve worked on it, but I’m certainly not posting it because I want to show off, and I think it’s a perfect piece of art to be beheld.  In truth, what I’m hoping for is for someone to say ‘Actually, I think it would be better without that line’, or a suggestion to swap two words around, or change the title, or cut a stanza.  Because it’s impossible to judge whether one’s own work is good or not, I’m hoping for someone to give me advice.

I’ll stop now, because there is no answer.  I just hope no-one thinks I’m a pompous prick.

Contact me at my e-mail address at vikki.littlemore@live.co.uk 

 or follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/florentinemuray

“What a wonderful contribution to National Vegetarian Week”

“@FlorentineMuray said it so eloquently, ‘When you cook something you love, you add that little bit of a special spark’.”

www.thegreenbeet.com

Well-Worn Music II

Following on from yesterday’s post http://vikkilittlemore.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/well-worn-music/, I decided to accept my own challenge, and on the train journey home yesterday evening I hit the shuffle button and zipped my i-Pod away in my bag, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to hit skip.  To my utter delight I was treated to a wealth of songs that I haven’t heard for quite some time, and which I’d almost forgotten about.  In the short time it took to travel from Chester to Runcorn I was treated to a long-lost Oasis track that I haven’t heard for years, and which instantly transported me back to the 1990′s, Kings of Leon, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, songs which are there on my i-pod because I love them, but which I rarely listen to.

In the euphoria of this fresh music; invigorated, enlivened, it was only then that I realised how tired and bored I had become with listening to the same small selection of songs all the time.  As I mentioned last week, talking about Winter, you don’t realise how much something is weighing you down and depressing you; whether it be the cold, dark days of Winter, or the mess in the corner of your bedroom, you only realise that a weight has been lifted once it has gone.

So, I have well and truly learned my lesson and from now on I will put complete trust in my own music, and trust that there are no bad songs on my i-pod (which there aren’t), and from now on I will never fall back on the Top Rated Playlist. Ever!