Mushroom Risotto

Thursday was my parents' 19th Anniversary. And I wanted to do something special for them. As you can imagine, I decided to cook.

I am an Italian cuisine fan. The homemade pasta, pizza and risotto are my favourites. The best dish that I can cook as an Italian dish is; risotto. That's why I decided to cook them a mushroom risotto.

Ingredients: 

Makes 3-4 portions:

• 200 g. mushrooms
• Juice of a half lemon
• 1/3 cups (75 g.) butter
• 2 tbsp. basil, chopped
• 4 cups (900 ml) chicken broth; preferably homemade
• 2 tbsp. (30 ml.) olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped into small cubes
• 1 1/2 cups (275 g.) arborio rice
• 1/2 cups (100 ml.) white wine
• Salt and freshly grounded black pepper
• 3 tbsp. (45 grams) grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Clean the mushrooms with a wet towel and take of the dirt on it. Slice them into thing pieces and put them in a bowl. Squeeze the half of the lemon (the lemon prevents the mushroom from getting dark). Meanwhile, melt the 1/3 of the butter in a pan. Then add the mushrooms in it and cook the mushrooms until they are brown. When the mushrooms are cooked, take them to a plate. 
2. Pour the chicken broth to a pot. Heat it and bring a boil.
3. In the pan that you cooked the mushrooms, add the rest of the butter and melt it. Then add the onions and cook the onions until they are "transparent". Do not caramelise. Add the rice and stir the rice with the onions so that the rice can be coated with oil. Then add the sautéed mushrooms to the rice. 
4. Pour in the wine and cook it until the fluid is fully absorbed. 
5. Pour in a ladle of chicken stock and cook until the rice absorbs the whole fluid. Continue this until there is no more stock left. 
6. Finally, add the chopped basil, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. The cheese will give the risotto a creamy texture. 
7. Serve the dish with extra Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. 

Enjoy :)

Spanish Style

Today, I was organising my photos and then I was in this album called "Barcelona 2012". I was really shocked to find this folder because we were looking for these photos everywhere. I can easily say that Barcelona was one of the best I've seen. The dynamic people, amazing cuisine and the fantastic architecture were one of the couple of reasons. But my favourite was the cuisine, as you can imagine. Tapas and paella were incredibly delicious.
As I've said when I was looking at these photos from last year and I saw this amazing "patatas bravas" (a type of tapas). Maybe because that I was really hungry I just looked at it for about 2-3 minutes. So, I just went to youtube and found this video : 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vzyzlkouXsM

I used this exact recipe and it looked like this:

However, I changed some ingredients. For example, I put 2 tbsp. of greek yoghurt instead of just putting mayonnaise in the sauce. I think that yoghurt makes the dish lighter and definitely more healthy than mayo. 
Also, I did not put tomato paste in the sauce. I don't know why but I just didn't want to. 

Although the potatoes were delicious, they were not as crispy as they were in the video. I guess that's because of the type of the potatoes. 

But I was definitely in love with the sauce. 

Note: You will see this plate a lot in the upcoming posts because I love this plate and it's pattern and it is the only plate set that has all 12 plates in it. Others are broken, old or cracked. 

Dish #2: Fried peppers 

This is a very easy and simple dish. And it is one of my mom's favourite dish. 
You just take some couple of green peppers like this and you take of the top. Then you deep fry them until they are soft. Easy, huh?

I didn't realize this before but this dish looks like "Pimientos de Padron". It is also a tapas dish. 

When we were eating these I felt like I was in Spain again. It felt good and they were really yummy.