DIET 5:2 EXPERIMENTS - BACON AND MUSHROOM BAKED RISOTTO

Now then! Everyone banging on about the fast diet, the 5:2, where you have a low calorie intake for two non-consecutive days and eat normally the rest of the time? I started looking up some recipes and found a marvellous website called Lavender and Lovage. They list and tag all diet recipes and there is a lot of information on there, well worth a look. Most recipes on there are for two, some are for larger family amounts but it is all explained about portions.

I love risotto so my eyes bulged when I saw a recipe with low calories. It is 380 calories each, so a good main meal for a fasting day, and the amounts are for a serving for two people.

Ingredients:
2 medium rashers of lean back bacon
100g mushrooms, sliced
A few porcini mushrooms, soaked in 150mls of boiling water for ten minutes
1 medium onion, finely chopped
175g risotto rice
150mls dry white wine
300ml vegetable stock
Parsley
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200C/392F

Grill bacon until crispy, then chop into small bits.

In frying pan, use a low fat cooking spray (or a sprinkle of water of it is non-stick) and fry mushrooms for five minutes. Drain porcini mushrooms but keep the liquid. Chop those mushrooms finely and add to the frying pan with onion and cook for a couple of minutes.

Then add rice, stir. Add wine, porcini liquid and stir vigorously.

Add parsley, stock, bacon and give a big stir. Transfer to an over proof dish and cover. Cook for 30 minutes until the rice is soft and creamy.

Verdict, really nice. Never used white wine in risotto even though that is supposed to happen. But I don't like white. but now I have turned into some sort of lush, bought some, put some in this recipe and then got drunk on the rest! This is very tasty and filling.