Lemon-Kissed White Bean and Kale Risotto

33 minutes left to post this Daring Cooks' Challenge before the deadline! Between 1 p.m. and now I have burnt my fingers making cookies, cut my hand on a can, "run" 4 miles in 45 minutes at the gym (furthest ever), freaked out about the apartment beside ours in the building next door catching on fire and made this risotto. So I'm a bit tired. We'll see if I can string together coherent thoughts. If not just act like I did please...

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. The recipes can be downloaded here. In addition to making risotto all Daring Cooks were to make their own stock.

Since I'm not eating meat this month I made roasted vegetable stock, which I had not made previously. The recipe creates a very rich, dark stock though I'm not sure the time involved is worth the flavor. It was my first time successfully keeping a stock at a simmer so it was a very clear stock, even if it was almost black, and that was exciting.

I liked the Eleanor and Jess' chosen risotto recipe. It was much simpler than the version I have used in the past and still creates a warm, comforting risotto. This time I added a bunch of Swiss Chard cut into ribbons, the zest of a Lemon, a tablespoon of Lemon Juice, a half cup of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and Salt and Pepper to taste to create a nutritious main course. I liked the end result! The lemon kept things bright and the swiss chard broke up the creaminess of the risotto and beans. In the future I would probably try to make the lemon flavor more intense as there was only a hint of it.

Thanks to Eleanor and Jess for hosting a great, affordable challenge!