Une Envie de Sel

Photo credit: Andrea at Cooking Books

This might be a good time for me to introduce one of my favorite blogs, because my post today relates to a recipe I found there: The blog is called Cooking Books. Andrea is a natural archivist of marvelous recipes, and her photos are absolutely luscious! I often find myself longing to try one of her recipes, but here's the thing - my husband (now in journalism) is a former chef. This means that he cooks not only ten times better but ten times faster than I. I feel like a giant sloth every time I enter the kitchen...so basically, once we moved in together, my culinary efforts petered out to nothing.

Recently, however, following her second surgery, our daughter started weekly sessions of eating therapy. Children born with clefts can often be wary of eating or oversensitive to solids and textures. Among other things, their gag reflex doesn't function the same as other infants, and as small babies they have to teach themselves to eat without choking. Basically, since she came home, Q was patently unwilling to allow anything past her lips that wasn't puréed in the blender.

After just three weeks of therapy sessions, I'm happy to report, she is progressing by leaps and bounds. But it has been up to us to come up with tempting things that she might be willing to eat. Since my husband is at the moment working his proverbial posterior off, I thought it was time I started pulling my weight in the kitchen a bit more.
I knew I'd hit a sweet spot when I decided to try Cooking Books' recipe for green tea risotto with fresh mint and shaved parmesan. Now, this didn't seem like something a toddler would necessary love, but our toddler has unusually sophisticated tastes. She adored it from minute one, and gobbled it up by the handful every meal for three days running. As a bonus, she also discovered an abiding love for peas in the process (hence the bag of peas I've let her have in this photo.
As you can see from the crumbles on Q's table, I did not make the beautifully-formed risotto cakes that Andrea displays in her gorgeous photo....but it was delicious nonetheless, if not as elegant, and I highly recommend the recipe. What a superb, subtle and delicate combination of flavors, and just the thing for a warm spring evening!
This recipe is Q-approved!