Spinach Risotto with Roasted Tomatoes – VeganMoFo Day 16

Today’s prompt is for “complementary colours” – colours that fall on opposite sides of a colour wheel, they provide a high contrast and make the other colour stand out well! Thanks high school art class. The colours I chose today are red and green, which incidentally are also the colours that were or will be featured yesterday and Sunday! You can get some great food with red and green.

For the green part of the meal, I made a garlicky spinach risotto – spinach and garlic are flavours that go really well together and putting all that in a risotto is delicious. For the red part, I simply roasted tomatoes! Small ones work best – I used baby plum – and roasting them really enhances the flavour. Especially this time of year, when tomatoes are not really that tasty raw, roasting gives them a really rich, deep flavour.

I used frozen spinach in this risotto, which I defrosted before pureeing, but you could use fresh if you like, you’d have to blanch it first and use a fair amount! The photo above shows the risotto topped with my Tofu Cheese which will be coming to the blog later this month.

Spinach Risotto with Roasted Tomatoes

• Servings: 2-3
• Print

Ingredients

• 500g baby plum tomatoes, halved lengthways
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 300g frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 tbsp vegan butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• 200g risotto rice
• 1 tsp dried basil

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F
1. Toss the halved tomatoes gently with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Arrange on baking trays, rounded side down, and place in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.
2. Next, make the risotto. Melt the butter in a pan, and fry off the onion and garlic until softened.
3. Add the rice, and cook for 2 minutes, stirring.
4. Next, add the vegetable stock to the rice a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly, until the stock is absorbed. Repeat this until all the stock is used up or the rice is tender.
5. Meanwhile, in a food processor or blender, add the spinach and a couple of tablespoons of water. Blend until pureed.
6. Just before the rice is cooked, add the pureed spinach and mix well.
7. Serve the risotto topped with the roasted tomatoes!