POST 3, PART II: THE VEGETARIAN OPTION

Right, risotto. Two things about risotto, in my book. ‘Secrets’, if you will. The first is to use the best-quality dried porcini or wild mushrooms you can get your mitts on. I swear I’m not being a food snob here – it really does make all the difference. Ideally some big, impressive ones imported from Italy that cost the earth from the deli blah, blah, blah, rather than chibbily little supermarket ones. And, assuming you don’t fess up, that way you’ll fool your diner into thinking you can make plain ole mushrooms and rice taste magnificent through your genius cooking skills alone. Do you see?

(Sorry, that was a crap secret, wasn’t it? A bit like when my granny revealed that the ‘secret’ to her famed asparagus soup was, erm, adding some fresh asparagus to a packet soup. Bless her. The second’s coming up and is better, I promise...)

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp dried mushrooms
100ml Madeira wine
100ml boiled water

Olive oil for frying

400g mushrooms, sliced (I like a mixture of chestnut, button and portobello)
1 tbsp fresh or dried thyme

1/2 onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
180g risotto rice

Dry white wine (see note)
1 pint vegetable stock

2 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated – plus extra to serve
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

METHOD

1) Soak the dried mushrooms in the Madeira and boiled water for at least half-an-hour until soft and rehydrated. The Madeira is optional, but it really does complement the nuttiness of the parmesan and mushrooms so I urge you to try it, but just double the water if you do want to omit it. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid and run a knife through them until they’re roughly chopped, just to make their flavour and texture go that bit further. Reserve the liquid, leaving it to settle as there’s often a bit of grit on the dried mushrooms that you don’t want in your risotto.

2) Soften the onion in some olive oil and salt in a large saucepan. Take your time to do this – by sweating them for a good 10 minutes until translucent and golden they’ll be melt-in-your-mouth rather than left with a bit of a crunch. I tend to add the garlic a couple of minutes in to prevent it from catching. Next, add the risotto rice and stir for a couple more minutes on a gentle heat.

3) So, here’s secret number two – drum roll, please... Open a decent bottle of dry white wine, pour a glassful and chuck it over the rice. Now – and here’s the really important part – refill your glass and drink. Maybe pour a glass for your guest if you’re feeling generous. Either way, having a glass of vino to-hand is vital to making a good risotto, I reckon, as you have to stand there over the hob for around half-an-hour, stirring, stirring, stirring. Which is extremely dull and quite sweaty.

4) When the wine has been absorbed by the rice, carefully add the mushroom liquid, being careful not to let the sediment at the bottom slide in too. Next, add the vegetable stock a ladle at a time. This is the point at which stupid people who think using jars of Dolmio and bags of Aunt Bessie’s constitutes cooking complain risottos are hard to make – well, they’re not. You just have to slowly add liquid, constantly stir until it’s absorbed and then add some more until it’s cooked. Der!

5) When you’re about half way through the stock, fry your fresh mushrooms in some olive oil with some fresh or dried thyme and seasoning. In theory, this should coincide with the precise moment your rice is cooked to perfection, but I am rubbish with timings so I won’t stake my life on it. Just set them aside if they’re done a little early.

6) Once all the stock is added, your rice should be pretty much there – taste to check. I don’t care whether you prefer it al dente or well-done – each to their own. Add a bit more boiled water if you need to cook it a little longer.

7) The moment you’re happy with your rice, stir through the mushrooms and parmesan. At this point, a TV chef (I’m talking to YOU James Martin!) would tell you to add buckets of butter, olive oil, maybe some mascarpone, etc... But if you’re at all like me and your muffin top is in constant danger of spilling over into a Yorkshire pudding, I figure why get used to food filled with those sorts of calories? This is delicious as it is, but go ahead if ye dare.

8) Oh, yeah – serve. With some cracked black pepper and parmesan shavings. And that’s it.

Adolf tentatively tucked into his risotto... In hindsight, I can see he was one of those boring, bland vegetarians surviving solely on macaroni cheese. Yawn. He even accused my mushrooms of being too mushroomy! But I consoled myself with the thought that I’d at least get a half-decent shag out of it. I say half-decent, because that’s all it had been to-date – but my worst fears were confirmed. Because there was something else Adolf wouldn’t eat, if you get my drift... And that’s just not cricket, as far as I’m concerned. One does develop a taste for these things, like coriander.

But if you’re not prepared to man-up and get down, then it’s bye-bye. So I dumped him.

Illustration by the marvellous Bex Barrow.

POST 2, PART I: HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS IN THE MORNING?

Actually, I’m way too much of a coward to cook eggs for someone I’m attempting to impress. Boiled or fried, I have a knack for cocking up the apparently foolproof tasking of cooking an egg. Scrambled is always over-cooked. Soft-boiled is hardboiled. Fried ditto. Omelettes – see scrambled.

Poached is by far the worst. I’ve tried all the tricks – shallow pan versus deep saucepan of water, a dash of vinegar and/or swirling the liquid around before dropping the egg in. Whatever, I wind up with the white parting company with the yolk, leaving me fishing for a lonely yellow ball amidst the froth of white that I just know I’m gonna burst before I get it on my toast.

What is the secret to successfully poaching an egg?! Answers on a postcard please...

Still, the song seemed kind of apt... But my staple boyfriend breakfast is, in fact, the bacon sandwich. Now, while I believe a bona fide bacon sarnie should be made with perfectly fresh white bread – with that pleasingly crisp crust and preferably still slightly warm from the baker’s oven – if you’re buying the constituent parts the day before (as this is the morning after, remember) you are better off, in my humble opinion, investing in a nice, sliced brown bread. Something malted and seeded. Not just boring wholemeal.

A risky move, you might think – but hear me out...

The unusual choice of brown bread, you see, allows you to conduct a crucial boyfriend test – a little something I like to call The Bacon Sandwich Test. I developed this a few years ago when I was dating someone I can only loosely describe as a ‘man’ a couple of years younger than myself – well, four to be precise. ‘Getting some cash back’ as a mate of mine calls it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, so I’ll refer to him as ‘Don’. (But as he’s not that innocent, I will tell you that ‘Don’ is only one vowel away from this real name. And since no one is called ‘Den’, ‘Din’ or ‘Dun’, you will doubtless deduce that his name is ‘Dan’. Well done, Sherlock.)

Now, I knew full-well Don, 24, was immature – that was a given. Boys lag a few years behind us girls, so I figured he’d be around the 19- or 20-mark in female years. I had my reservations, but I think I’d recently read a magazine article in the hairdressers – let’s blame Cosmo – about how refreshing and baggage-free younger men are. And I must admit I liked the idea of training someone up to suit my specific requirements. So when he asked me out after what I’d chalked up as yet another ill-advised one-night-stand, I decided to give him a go.

However, I soon started to suspect Don was especially childish. The fact that he didn’t have a bed when we first met was a dead giveaway, in hindsight. Just a broken futon, a duvet with no cover and an old sleeping bag. I really don’t know what I was thinking. Standards, Amy! Standards! There were also the World of Warcraft sessions that lasted late into the night (though not while I was there, I hasten to add). His grotty bathroom that never seemed to be stocked with items such as toilet roll, soap or towels. Oh, and the shower didn’t work either. Not that this bothered him, because personal hygiene is overrated. He was in a band, too. Yawn.

And then there was the food thing. I want to say he ate like a baby, but that’s not quite true. He liked to please me by taking me to fancy-ish restaurants and trying new things, but I suppose, to my mind, he put food together in a totally random and unrefined way. But what bugged me about this was the ballsy way he’d pass off his God-awful creations and combos as delicious and superior, subjecting me during the course of our five-month relationship to some of the worst meals I’ve ever ingested. In short, he believed he was a better cook and foodie than me, the cocky little sod.

This was war.

Cooking is my thing, see. It’s what I quite literally bring to the table. And, in this case, I’d clearly demonstrated to Don, time after time, that I’m a kick-ass cook while he, on the other hand, was not. But rather than roll over and accept defeat, dear obstinate Don kept on cooking for me. I can chart our relationship’s demise through three truly hideous meals he made for me, all of which I’ll share with you some day. But, for now, here’s by far the best/worst...

I turned up to Don’s one week night after work, tired and hungry. I’d been bugging him about what he planned to cook as the last time he’d had the genius idea of making lasagne, from scratch, at 7pm on a Wednesday... Which we didn’t eat until gone 11pm, and even then the pasta was still crunchy. But he was insistent it was a surprise. His treat.

“You can help me get it ready,” he told me on arrival. ‘Geez, thanks’, I thought, wondering why we couldn’t just get a takeaway if that was the case. “I’m making chilli prawns with mango and red onion salsa,” he boasted as I rolled up my sleeves.

Red onion..? For two people with a passing interest in kissing later on..? R-i-g-h-t... Another fine choice, Don. He gathered his ingredients – a packet of pre-cooked prawns and, um, that was about it. “I couldn’t get a mango,” he muttered. “Or a red onion,” he added, passing me an ordinary onion. An ordinary onion? There. Are. No. Words. Any rational person would have abandoned this recipe when they realised the shop was all out of mangos. But not our Don, no. Here was a man happy to chow down on raw – raw!­ – onion rather than admit he was a total halfwit when it came to cooking.

“So you’re planning on serving us pre-cooked prawns with some raw, white onion?” “Yeah.” “Raw onion?” “Yeah. It’s the same. They’re just different colours. They’re the same thing.” “No, they’re really not. You’re seriously telling me you’re going to eat raw onion? Really..? Where’s the chilli?” He presented me with some chilli powder. I scowled. “Maybe we could fry the onion?” he offered.

At which point I stormed to Tesco for a pizza. And that, boys and girls, was the last time Don was allowed to cook for me.

As I have spectacularly failed to get to the bleedin’ point, I will have to tell you how Don fared in the bacon sandwich test in my next post. And I also promise to put up a proper breakfast recipe for my favourite smoothie as my random thoughts on bacon sandwiches really don’t count. Sorry!

Next post: recipe and conclusion...