A Happy New Year

This blog has coincided with another attempt to give away the fags. Within hours the palate is zinging away looking for another taste sensation to relieve its boredom. This morning, after whacking on the first nicotine patch, instead of imbibing three cigarettes, we ingested the following: A not bad slice of toasted sourdough with a four berry jam. Delicious. Have run out of the caffineated coffee and have had to resort to the decaf that we bought to use for the affogatos.

The affogatos have come into our lives because my friend Paris lent me his ice cream maker -- one of those fab ones with its own internal freezing unit. It's just too easy. Nothing nicer. Homemade ice cream with a shot of espresso. Trouble was, we couldn't stop at one, and then were still awake at 3 in the morning. Hence the decaf.

And the 'simple' ice cream recipe is just marvellous: 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 300 ml of the best cream you can get your hands on, vanilla extract. Whip it all together and churn.

However, back to today.

The toast and coffee kept me going until my return from Pilates. And fantastic, there's a bit of last night's Pumpkin & Smoked Chicken Risotto left. I had been thinking about rolling it into little balls stuffed with mozarella and then crumbed and fried, but I'm just going to reheat and scoff.

The risotto is a breeze to make too. None of that stirring for 40 minutes.

1 cup arborio rice
2.5 cups stock (chicken or veg)
60 g butter
350 g jap or butternut pumpkin diced,
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 tbsp chopped italian parsley
1 smoked chicken breast

Preheat oven to 190 degrees.
Put rice, stock, butter and pumpkin into ovenproof dish and cover tightly with lid or foil.
Bake for 30 minutes or until rice is soft.
Stir through cheese, salt and pepper, and diced chicken.

Dinner tonight will be the Significant Other's (henceforeward S.O.) ricotta gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce. Rich but marvellous. He's got a very light hand, I'm sure if I tried to make it, it'd turn out like porridge.

Really must get out of chair and go and get some nice mixed leaves to have with it.

Tomorrow is the S.O.'s birthday. There's some duck in the fridge.