It’s that time of the month. Daring Cooks time. This month, the challenge was homemade stock and risotto. I really enjoyed making both parts. It was leisurely and delicious! I’ve made risotto on multiple occasions, but this was my first time making stock and that was a real treat!
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.
Simple as ever, and a great product. But I had a dilemma. All of those perfectly good vegetables being used to flavour the stock weren’t going anywhere. I know some people save their vegetable scraps and keep those for making stock (which I think is so absolutely awesome!!), but I hadn’t done that. After they had boiled away for 4 hours, drained and squished of their juices, I decided that I wasn’t going to waste all of those veggies. I was going to make a vegetable risotto. And I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
Honestly, it was very good. The stock, of which I made my own vegetable version of, came out just right.
Vegetable Stock
An original recipe by Lauren of Celiac Teen
Ingredients
1 onion, peeled
3 tomatoes
1 small head of broccoli
3 carrots
1 small butternut squash, peeled
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp peppercorns
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried parsley
8 cups water
Steps
Clean vegetables. Remove ends and seeds of all vegetables. Chop vegetables into fairly large chunks.
Place all ingredients in a large stock pot. Cover and bring to a boil, then decrease the heat to low and simmer for 4 hours.
Remove bay leaves and strain through fine sieve. Make sure to force out any stock that may be trapped within the vegetables.
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{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
I love how you reused the veggies after making the stock! Bookmark!
Lauren,
Your vegetable stock sounds so yummy and the final dish, wonderful. Very nice!
Yes this challenge allowed for lots of creativity, I loved it too! Loved how you used the vegetables from your stock – I am sure that added a lot of great flavor!
Great risotto. And glad you enjoyed your baby food he he. Always better not to waste. Yes I found to it was an easier but delicious challenge
Looks great! I ate my leftover mushy veggies too and they were delicious 🙂
It tasted like chicken noodle soup. Without the chicken. Or the soup. Or the noodle. Like a vegan, non-soup non-noodle chicken noodle soup. That pretty much sums it up. Well I think that really does sums it up it wonderful how you put in the baby food into the risotto and how your home-made veggie stock had such a powerful punch and your cut veggie photos are so summery looking. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.
I love all of your veggie pics and veggie love. There is nothing that can cheer a day up quite like walking through a farmers market (or even the produce section of a grocery store). All those colors and brightness and dreams of great things to come!!!
…anyway…great job! That does look yummy!
Your vegetable mish-mash looks great. I had to giggle at your description of the taste: chicken noodle soup without the chicken, the soup and the noodles. LOL!!!!
adore what you did. you are amazing. great job.
What a great idea, using the vegetables from the stock back in the risotto! Your pictures look fantastic, and I can almost taste the creamy goodness just looking at them! Awesome job.
I love this! Such a great idea to reuse the veggies!
Lauren, you are fantastic!! How thoughtful to reuse the veggies! They must have added so much awesome flavor to the risotto!!
Brilliant!!! Great pics, btw!
looks positively delish…I love veg mash. 🙂 you are a girl of my own heart. veg mash added to anything is good! i like adding it to bean dips, random soups, using it as a spread for collard wraps… but risotto? I've never done that with it. thanks for the great inspiration and recipe.
-Kim | http://www.affairsofliving.com | @eatingfreely
I definitely approve of your thrifty way here!
I try to use my scraps for stock as much as possible, but I have to admit that I composted some otherwise perfectly good vegetables this time. (Oddly, I didn't make the chicken stock because I was afraid of wasting meat, but I guess carrots and celery are cheap enough that I don't feel it so much!)
The results look scrumptious.
I swear, Lauren, your pictures are getting better and better! Excellent job on this challenge, I love that you re-used the vegetables!
the risotto looks yummy…
And i really love your pics of the preparing proces!
I'm not a big stock maker, this challenge was my second time… but you make the veggie stock sound easy and so delicious — and I love the idea of using the cooked veg for the risotto: I'm going to try this soon!
did you get a new camera? these photos are outstanding!
Every photo is gorgeous. Isn't it amazing how photogenic vegetables are? And especially so with sunlight. Great job, and I love the you didn't waste anything. (I hate wasting.) Such a yummy risotto.
Shirley
Beautiful job, looks so tasty!
Yum! I love that all the vegetables were incorporated into the risotto instead of just sitting on top, and it looks gorgeous.
Your risotto looks creamy and delicious! I always hate throwing away the veggies when making chicken stock too!
Great job Lauren! I make veg stock quite often in either my crockpot or pressure cooker, then freeze it in 2 cup containers. And guess what I use for the veggies? Whenever I'm prepping veggies, I save the unused pieces (onion skins, ends of carrots, peels of carrots and celery etc.) and I put them in a ziplock bag in my freezer. By the time I decide to make stock, I have a good amt of veggies to use.
Great pix. Love the Daring Bakers challenges. Keep up the good work.
best,
Ellen
http://www.Iamglutenfree.blogspot.com
You just got to love your veggies, right? Love what you've done with the challenge!
The veggies in the sun do look gorgeous!!! Nice work!
Lauren, this is AWESOME! I adore risotto and this version looks absolutely divine. You really pushed this one to the highest degree.
I should really give the vegetable broth a go… after seeing how well you have done with it….
Creamy and luscious, love just the way it looks 🙂
Sawadee from Bangkok,
Kris
Lauren, Great job on improvising. The veggie risotto looks delicious. That's the best darn baby food I've seen. 🙂 Wonderful challenge!
What was it about the method that you didn't like?
It was a new recipe for me as well. I normally stir the entire/most of the time.
I loved the nainimo bars from you're challenge. I still have some sitting in the freezer.