Hello friends 🖐, and welcome to another Cactus Culinary Kitchen Adventure!
It’s been a while since I’ve checked in, hope everyone’s staying safe and healthy, away from Covid-19, from STDs, from rapidly moving vehicles, falling anvils, and the most feared foe of all, PEOPLE.
Nah but seriously, Cyprus is doing pretty well so far, thankfully. Let’s hope it stays that way, because we want to welcome as many tourists as possible (if you’re coming from countries that are whitelisted). Seriously though, come over. We have great beaches, it’s nice and hot, practically no Covid-19 currently, and most importantly, our economy needs you.
Enough about all this though, you are all here for ONE reason, and ONE REASON ONLY, and that’s foooooooooooood. 👀
I’ve been eating more healthily lately. Thank the universe I can get creative, because how many meals consisting of plain rice, salad and yogurt can you have before calling it quits? Dieting gets BORING. Food isn’t meant to be boring – it can be healthy and tasty AF at the same time.
It took me a while to get the hang of my new lifestyle (still getting there). I’ve always cooked, but in the past few months I’d found myself reluctant to cook any proper meal that takes more than 10 minutes to prepare, so I would usually go for frozen vegetables and chicken nuggets in the oven – because it literally takes 5 minutes to prepare, IF you’re getting creative with spices for the vegetables. With the diet, my routine and habits had to change dramatically, so I got a theatre mask and started practising Hamlet, or to put it more literally, I started cooking and exercising more regularly.
Currently, one meal that I’m supposed to have twice a week is the aforementioned culinary masterpiece – plain rice 🍚 with low-fat Greek yogurt and salad 🥗.
Surprise, surprise – I was sick of it by the second time I had it.
I decided that the next time I’m going to make rice, it has to be different, if I’m to resist the temptations of burgers, pizza and other heavenly, sinful delights. It had to be something similar using the same basic ingredients – but at the same time, very different. The logic behind my reasoning goes like this:
What the meal consists of:
Rice
Salad
Low-fat Greek yogurt
What I see:
Rice
Any type of starchless, fatless, sugarless plant food
Some type of low-fat dairy product
Conclusion:
Mushroom risotto with low-fat cream cheese
🍚🍄
and salad
🥗
Thankfully, my dietitian is open-minded and generally gets behind my inventiveness. She gets the beauty of deconstructing a meal and putting it back together in a totally different pattern. Just like playing with Lego bricks!
Without further ado, I present to you another episode of:
The Creative Cactus Culinary Kitchen Adventure!
Serves 2,5 people. This is to say my boyfriend and I had one portion each, with some leftovers that were frustratingly not even enough for one single portion. They were unceremoniously consumed the following day as sides to something I can't even remember now.
What to buy
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 300 g portobellini mushrooms, chopped in medium-sized chunks
- unspecified amount of white wine
- 200 g risotto rice (arborio is preferred, but being a basic (Cypriot) bitch, I used glazed rice, the kind we use in soups)
- 2 mushroom stock cubes
- 100 g cream cheese
How to put it together
For this recipe I picked the largest pot I own, worthy of any Cypriot grandmother’s envy (or pride, depending how you see it).
I began by finely chopping 1 large onion and 2 cloves of garlic. I warmed up the olive oil nicely on high heat, whispering sweet nothings over the pot as it sat on the stove. Once I got it nice and runny (any inappropriate imagery is purely of your own making, people), I added the onion and garlic, mixing until they got a nice, light tan – this is summer, after all. The chopped mushrooms were wished good luck and tossed in the pot along with their more interesting and versatile friends, the onion and the garlic. Mixing every few minutes, just so the mushrooms don’t get too comfortable and stick to the bottom of the pot, I let everything brown a bit more.
The hissing made sweet music in my ears, the smells were wafting from the pot, and my thick glasses were fogging up a little💨👓.
Time for the rice.
The rice was weighed and poured directly in the pot along with everything else – NOT washed, in order to maintain the high starch content to make things more sticky (that’s what I read online, anyway). Next followed the aforementioned indeterminate amount of white wine – just wing it. Pour some down your gullet, too. That way, you won’t really mind if the risotto doesn’t come out good, and your childhood trauma won’t hurt as much.
Well…it’ll still hurt, but you won’t care as much.
Yay for psychotropic substances.
Wow, that got dark fast. Let’s leave the murky depths of the human psyche to the psychologists and get back to the food, shall we?
Wine, into the pot, over the rice, onion and garlic. Simmer.
2 mushroom stock cubes, in the pot. Add indeterminate amount of hot water, until everything is swimming in there. It should look something like this:
I might have lowered the heat somewhere around this stage to a simmer, but I can’t be sure. Try it, let me know what happens!
Keep adding hot water from the kettle as needed (that is, when the pot’s contents start looking NOT like the photo above). Risottos are thirsty, so make sure you water this one like a sensitive flower in the hot days of summer. Keep watering and simmering until the rice is cooked and you are left with a thick consistency, like for example that of a face mask.
Note: this is not a face mask and you will probably burn your face if you apply it, but most importantly you'll waste a potentially great risotto.
Once the rice has cooked and most of the water has evaporated, it’s time to remove the pot from the heat and add the magical ingredient:
cream cheese
Image from https://www.servedfromscratch.com/cream-cheese-from-scratch/
Just plop it in there and mix well. Serve immediately so you can fully appreciate the comfort of a warm risotto – it’s not really enjoyable the next day. Trust me, I tried. Thankfully, I have a boyfriend who is not picky with food, and loves mushrooms more than coffee, even (PS. he lives on coffee).
1 caveat and 1 note:
Caveat: The water added must be HOT each time, so as not to lower the cooking temperature of the rice. Remember to re-heat the kettle each time before pouring! Note: The recipe I got the inspiration from called for vegetable stock in a separate boiling pot, which is added in ladlefuls whenever the "main" pot requires it. I found that to be too much work, so I just added stock cubes (mushroom, not vegetable) straight into the main pot, and then poured in HOT water from the kettle whenever necessary.
Thank you for joining me today on another Creative Cactus Culinary Kitchen Adventure, you were lovely, and I’m going to bed because it’s 11 pm and I am NOT a party animal.
Peace out ✌
The Cactus
The Creative Cactus 
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