Gemma Cooking outdoors is one of my favourite things to do. I don’t need much to find my happy place, a few ingredients, some good music, beautiful surroundings and my family around me. It always makes me happy when I am outside rustling up something simple for dinner, with no fixed time frame and after a day at the beach. That is how we will spend most of the summer holidays cooking meals like this chorizo and roasted pepper risotto outdoors.
Earlier in the summer we took our trailer tent to the Lakes. The children ran about having fun of an evening. Jim pottered, keeping our glasses topped up and good music playing and I started cooking a this chorizo and roasted pepper risotto for our dinner. Cooking a risotto is one of the most enjoyable ways to relax for me. There is little more on my mind than stirring the pan and adding stock to the thirsty rice. It is the perfect recipe for slowing down and while I almost never really follow a recipe I have always found this Jamie Oliver one a simple recipe to start from. I have used it to write this recipe as I cooked my risotto from intuition in the video below.
Cooking risotto is about intuition, patience and love. If you are looking for a crowd pleaser and a way to switch off and slow down then this is my invitation to grab a pan, some ingredients and take a camping stove outdoors with the people you love. As you bring everyone together to break bread and make memories this summer remember that simple moments are often the most joyful.
Chorizo and roasted pepper risotto
Ingredients
- 2 small red onions finely diced
- 1 small brown onion finely diced
- 3 spring onions sliced
- 4 cloves of garlic sliced
- 125 g chorizo sliced/diced
- 150 g roasted red pepper strips
- 90 g Parmesan cheese
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- unsalted butter I didn’t have any
- 400 g risotto rice
- 2 wine glasses of dry white wine
- 1.1 litres chicken stock
- salt and pepper to season
- handful fresh flat leaf parsley to finish
Instructions
- Heat the stock. Peel and prepare all the onions, garlic, chorizo and add to a big pan with your roasted peppers and olive oil then fry gently for about 15 minutes, or until softened but not coloured.
- Add the rice and turn up the heat – the rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After 1 minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the wine and keep stirring. Any harsh alcohol flavours will evaporate and leave the rice with a tasty essence.
- Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of sea salt. Turn the heat down to a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside.
- Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and almost massaging the creamy starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will will take some intuition, the best trick I was taught with risotto is not to add more stock until the rice looks thirsty and keep stirring. Continue until the rice is cooked. Time frames will vary depending on cooking indoors/outdoors etc.
- Taste the rice to see if it is cooked? Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Don’t forget to check the seasoning carefully. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water.
- Remove the pan from the heat, add 1 knob of butter, the flat leaf parsley and Parmesan, then stir well.
- Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes – Jamie Oliver says this is the most important part of making the perfect risotto, as this is when it becomes creamy and oozy like it should be. Eat it as soon as possible.
