Daring Cooks: Tri Colored Roasted Pepper & Pea Risotto with Cheddar

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

Once again, I was happy not to be intimidated by this challenge since I've made risotto a few times in the past and did not find the task too complicated.

We also had to make broth from scratching. The recipe I came up with is one of those "clean out the refrigerator" recipes.

Ingredients
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
1 small rosemary sprig
1 bay leaf
10 pepper corns
3 tablespoons cilantro
3 dry de arbol chiles
6 cups water

Directions
1. Add all ingredients to a pot. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer for 45 min. Strain.

Now to the risotto part: if you want a full recipe, let me know. I made two changes to the original recipe: using Cheddar cheese instead of Parmesan and using red onions instead of regular ones.
Note: my SLR camera told me to charge my battery as soon as I started working on this post. Thus, the photographs you see here were shot with my point/shoot camera. Ugh, the difference is huge.

1. In oil cook chopped red onions.

2. Add aborio rice and cook for a few minutes, making sure each grain is coated with oil.

 

3. Add a bit of wine, and cook until it evaporates. In several batches, add the broth, making sure it is cooked off before adding more.

  

  

4. Once the rice is cooked through, add the toppings: I added a cup of defrosted peas and roasted red and yellow peppers. How do you roast peppers? Find out here.

  

5. Next, add cheese, let it melt. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes before serving.

  

I was pretty happy with how this came out!

 

What do you like to add to your risotto?