I’ve been continuing to test out new recipes. This was another great find in my free Slimfast book. (Some have been awful but there are a few really good ones in there!).

This one is a cheat’s risotto – it’s quick and easy, not “real” risotto but much easier to cook. I like it for the speed and convenience as cooking my real risotto takes forever and requires constant stirring, as well as have so much butter and cheese and wine in that it’s incredibly unhealthy. Once again this claims to serve 2 but easily serves 3 – such a surprise for a diet book but the portions are extremely generous (and I love a big portion).

Claims to serve 2, but I reckon it’s a 3-person meal. Calories per half of the cooked amount: 590kcal

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove (I use 3 or 4 cos I bloody love garlic)
• 80g back bacon, chopped (I used 2 or 3 rashers of streaky bacon but only cos it’s what I had left in the freezer….)
• 200g mushrooms, sliced
• 100ml water
• 200g asparagus
• 1 1/2 x 250g bags of brown basmati microwave rice (I used one bag, so slightly less than the recipe indicated, as I’ll never use up the other 1/2 bag of rice! But it was still a massive amount considering!)
• 50g parmesan cheese, grated
• 80g half fat creme fraiche

Steps

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan and fry the onions, garlic, bacon and mushrooms for 5 mins until soft, and then add 100ml water to the pan.
2. Remove the woody ends from the asparagus and chop into 6cm pieces. Add the asparagus to the pan and simmer for 3-4 mins
3. Cook the rice according to the packet insrtuctions
4. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the rice, creme fraiche and parmesan. Add some black pepper if you fancy it.
5. Serve and sprinkle with a little extra parmesan

A word of warning – I assumed it might be bland without tasting it and added a stock cube, but forgot how salty bacon is so mine ended up VERY salty. Instead I’d suggest adding some fresh herbs maybe instead to add flavour without the extra salt.