This week my husband gave me a challenge: to work with what I got in the fridge and not do any grocery shopping. Of course this has a purpose: save money.
What I Ate Today: Spinach Risotto with Italian Sausage and Green Bell Pepper
Whenever he asks me this I feel scared. A lot of questions pop up on my head: will I be able to do breakfast and dinner everyday without going to the deli? There's not enough of this or that, what should I do?
This is where the creativity comer along to help me. Sometimes I just open my fridge and say: "surprise me today". Sometimes I spend my whole day thinking about what I am going to cook for us. I even go to bed thinking about breakfast and dinner.
Yesterday after coming back from a session of the documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste at the Tribeca Film Festival, I was determined to work with what I had and be creative. I had no meal planning for this, so imagination had no limits for me. I knew that I had some Italian sausages on the fridge. Two, to be precisely. Two is enough for two people, right? It depends, ok? So, I know that sausages, specially the Italian types, goes well with peppers. And yes, I had one green bell pepper (half of it) hanging on my fridge drawer, just waiting. I also had garlic (always!), onion and white whine. That's it. If you have just plain white rice, you already have dinner at this point.
But I wanted risotto. I was craving it. Maybe because of the rainy day... I wanted something comfortable. Not pasta this time. Risotto. I had some cheese: a bit of fresh mozzarella, blue cheese, cheddar and this smoked gouda. I had good choices, except the cheddar, this would be a bold move for sure and a risk I wasn't willing to take. I went with the smoked one. Last but not least, I decided to add spinach to the risotto - I had some and didn't want to waste the opportunity of adding some nutritional on my meal.
Turns out that I didn't think about my wine quantity and ended up putting everything on the sausage. By the time that I was doing the risotto, I asked my self what I was going to do? I didn't want to put lime, because I know the risotto would taste like it, even with the other layers of flavor. So thinking about the acidity, I grabbed my apple vinegar. It worked amazingly. Just like wine, to be honest.
Tip: to make the pepper sweeter and tender I did let it sit on the fire on my stovetop for a few minutes. Better than stir it for a bunch of time.
And on the top of everything: garlic confit. I did this yesterday morning and wanted to try. So everything was actually a good excuse to put my new garlic confit on top. I know that everything was good because after two spoons my husband said: "I wish I could eat three times this".