Cottage Cooking Club Two Recipes, Month of December

It's time once again for our group; "The Cottage Cooking Club", a band of international blogger's to post our thoughts and experiences on the recipes for the month of December. We prepare seasonal and creative veggie dishes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's cookbook, "River Cottage Veg". Our group is meant to be a project aimed at incorporating more vegetable dishes in our everyday cooking, and is and has been inspired by our dedicated leader Andrea of The Kitchen Lioness. Each month Andrea picks one recipe from each of the 10 chapters and then we pick and choose as many as we have time for. However since this month is such a busy month for many of us she cut the recipes down to five in which I completed two of them. Our motto for the month of December is: to get into a festive mood with your veggies!

For the first recipe I prepared the Mushroom Stoup. The term stoup was described as “somewhere between and soup and a stew”. Aptly named as this was hearty and earthy with all the mushrooms. Fresh dill and parsley were added and brightened up this dish wonderfully. The addition of dumplings was optional but definitely worth it. They were made out of flour, English mustard, fresh herbs and shortening. Both my husband and I were very surprised that we liked the dumplings so much. Will be adding this stoup to my winter rotation, a winner, winner in my book.

For the second recipe I prepared the Arancini, rice balls. I used risotto rice from the day before, rolled it into balls with mozzarella cheese and a little pesto in the middle. I refrigerated them an hour or so before frying hoping that this step would help keep them together. As I was rolling into balls the rice was not sticking together very well, so I wet my hands and firmly squeezed the rice together; this seemed to work much better. Next the rice balls were dusted with flour, then rolled into an beaten egg and then rolled into fine bread crumbs. The balls that were squeezed together with a little water stayed together much better while frying, while the others fell apart. Served these with a marinara sauce and they were delicious.

These recipes have been slightly adapted from the "River Cottage Veg ", by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. First recipe; from the chapter "Hefty Soups” (page 154). Second dish from the chapter "Pasta and Rice" (page 270).

To see what recipes the other members chose for this month, head over to the LYL post for December 2015 on the CCC website, by clicking here.