Wots For Lunch?

I can't believe it's been more than a month since my last blog post. I'm quite upset with myself for allowing this to happen, but I won't go into all my reasons and excuses for not posting. Instead I'd like to share with you my submission for this month's Daring Cooks challenge.

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.

I have made risotto many times before so for me (and I hate to admit this) the real challenge was making the requisite stock from scratch. I used the chicken stock recipe supplied with our challenge and must say was really impressed with the end result. Once I had the risotto base completed I divided it into two and flavoured one half with a combination of sautéed portabellini and oyster mushrooms and a little Geo Watkins Mushroom Ketchup. The other half I flavoured with spicy sausage (debreziner), red pepper and peas. They both came our really well and there where lots of leftovers, some of which found it's way into my lunch box the next day.

You can find all the recipes for this month's challenge here

Having seen Marisa's contributions to the monthly Daring Cooks challenges I decided to become a Daring Cook myself and just completed my first challenge. This month's host was Michele from Veggie Num Nums, she challenged us to produce a meze spread including home-made pita bread and hummus (recipes listed here) and any other dishes of our choice. Even though making bread is on my list of to-dos this year I was a bit daunted at the though of making bread from scratch. It turned out even better then I could have imagined and I think this is definitely something I'll be doing again soon.

I left the hummus and pita plain and added some baba ganoush, green olives stuffed with garlic (there where none left for my lunch meze though) and some tabbouleh to the spread.

Today's Lunch:

• Lunchbox size pitas,
• tabbouleh,
• baba ganoush and
• hummus.

This is a lunch that I packed for myself awhile back using leftovers from a Meatless Monday dinner. I made this vegetarian stew by cooking up a bunch roughly chopped tomatoes with chunks of carrot, green pepper and spring onion with some smoked paprika and cumin. When everything was cooked I added some big chucks of smoked tofu and let it warm though.

Lunch:

• Vegetarian stew and
• couscous.

I've been a little scarce on the blogging front lately. The combination of a broken camera and succumbing to the nasty bug that is doing the rounds has kept me from packing/posting any lunches. Today's post is a lunch I packed last week that I photographed with the camera in my phone. It contains my first attempt at making a variation of Vietnamese Summer rolls. They didn't turn out too badly, but are probably best eaten right after you make them and not left in the fridge overnight as I did.

Today's Lunch:

• Vietnamese Summer rolls filled with smoked ham and julienne carrot, mange tout, red cabbage, baby corn and spring onions,
• a dipping sauce with soy sauce, umeboshi vinegar and some slices of spring onion and
• some baby tomatoes.