Well, I will never catch up with Maggie, because she has already done more recipes than there are in my whole book. But here I am with two recipes in two days.
Thank goodness for my Global knife, the best tool I’ve ever had for chopping vegetables. This recipe requires you to dice courgettes and aubergines to the size of grains of rice. I’m not the best chopper in the world, but with this knife I did it tolerably well in about 10 minutes.
The veg are sauteed and then added to a classic plain risotto, which is served with lamb cubes threaded onto rosemary twigs and pan-fried. Actually I grilled mine using my cast-iron grill pan, because it’s the best way of quickly cooking meat so that it’s caramelised on the outside and still pink on the inside.
It was nice; I liked the way the flavour of the tiny dice permeated the risotto. For a vegetarian version, it would be good with grilled halloumi cheese, which could also be threaded on skewers.
I LOVE my Global knives! I often joke (?!) to my husband that if the house was burning down, I’d save the Globals and then go back for him. Now you have the gorgeous things it is worth investing in a brilliant sharpener for them, called the MinoSharp. It is designed especially for Japanese knives, which are cut in a ‘v’ shape rather than bevelled like European knives. This makes if difficult to sharpen them on a steel, and I am useless at whetstones. You can get it through Amazon – here is the link to the UK site, I don’t know if there is a French equivalent? http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=minosharp&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=3498322333&ref=pd_sl_khocvddqe_b
Thanks Maggie — that actually looks almost identical to the sharpener I already have, and I was wondering if it was safe to use it with the Global knife (singular — I only have one, which I use exclusively for vegetables!)