Roasted Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Risotto

Obviously, this isn’t a picture of roasted butternut squash and red pepper risotto – it’s mushroom and sundried tomato risotto. I decided that the photo of the former was not particularly attractive so there we have it; I will leave you to imagine what my bowl of sunshine yellow risotto with red peppers looked like.

Risotto is another of my favourite meals to have. I haven’t been all that adventurous with risotto, but regulars at my dinner table are mushroom risotto and courgette risotto, usually with sundried tomatoes added and occasionally bits of sausage or chicken, depending on whether the mood takes me or not.

This was a bit of a departure and featured roasted butternut squash (BNS because I’m lazy) and roasted red and yellow peppers (I roast these in batches and then freeze them – they’re really handy to have to throw into all sorts of meals and add colour and hopefully nutrients too!). And I added the sundried tomatoes too – I like their chewy texture, their flavour and I have quite a few in the cupboard to work through at the moment.

Preheat the oven, peel and deseed the BNS, rub with some oil and roast until tender. I wasn’t really paying attention to the timing for this but probably about 45 minutes at about 170C ish. I started roasting the BNS just before I started the risotto. Soften the onion (I used a red one because when I cut into my white onion it looked a bit weird) in some oil and then add the (risotto) rice. Stir until well coated with the oil and then when it sounds like it’s cracking a bit add some dry sherry. Add sundried tomatoes if you fancy. Add stock, stirring occasionally (it’s too much effort to stir all the time!) until the rice is soft to your liking. l don’t like al-dente rice so the 20-25 minutes on the packet is never long enough. Reserve some of the roasted BNS to cut into cubes to garnish and then add the rest of the roasted BNS near to the end, mashing it in well so that the pot turns golden. I added the roasted peppers close to the end of the cooking time but actually, next time I defrost and warm them through some other way because the stirring made them fall apart completely. Finish the risotto with a generous amount of grated parmesan.

Pretty successful though I still have a preference for mushroom or courgette! Out of interest my stock powder of choice is Kallo at the moment. It doesn’t contain garlic and I really, really don’t like garlic. So it’s a winning choice.

I’m going to link this to ‘Extra Veg’ a blogging challenge to encourage us all to add veg to our diets. I’m lucky that there are plenty of veggies that I really enjoy eating but this recipe would be a great way of getting more veg into your family meals! Hosted by Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary this month and founded by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy.

OK, I relent, photo is below….