Risotto isn't hard to make at all! Just follow our easy recipe with plenty of green asparagus, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms - and of course parmesan! If you want to make the dish 100% vegetarian, just replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock. enjoy!

Directions

1. Bring the water to the boil with the stock subes. Wash the asparagus and snap off the bottom half - the stringy bit. Clean and quarter the mushrooms, rinse and halve the tomatoes. Roughly grate the parmesan and pop everything to the side.

2. Finely chop onion and garlic and cook on medium heat while stirring for about 5 minutes, until fragrant and the onions have cleared. You don't want them to brown! Add risotto rice and thyme and stir for a few minutes, to keep it from burning.

3. Add wine while stirring and turn up the heat a bit. Stir until the rice has absorbed almost all of the wine.

4. Add the stock with a soup ladle bit by bit while you stir. Let the rice absorb all of the stock before adding more. When you've added half your stock, pop in the mushrooms and continue adding the stock as before, until the risotto is the consistency of thin porridge. You might not need all of the stock. Be careful your risotto doesn't become too thick or firm - you want it more liquid than you think, and with a bit of bite left in the rice. When the risotto cools on the plate, it can quickly get too dense.

5. Remove the risotto from the heat and add grated parmesan, asparagus and cherry tomatoes. Stir carefully and season with salt, pepper and lemon to taste. Serve in deep plates with wholewheat bread, and optionally with a garnish of herbs and roasted mushrooms, and drizzle with olive oil. Enjoy!

Tip

Although you can buy grated parmesan in bags, it's cheaper to buy a whole piece at the supermarket and grate it yourself. It's much tastier too. If you like, you can opt for Grana Padano - it's not "real" parmesan, but it is the cheaper cousin and tastes almost like the real thing.