An easy and healthy vegetarian risotto with broccoli and peas that cooks within 15 minutes in a single serving, with a presentation that is not only enticing for the toddler, but also helps the dish cool down quickly.
After cooking for my two daughters for almost three years, I am sharing what I normally make for them. For me, a good toddler’s recipe needs to be simple, fast, easily adjustable in terms of servings, and requires minimal cleaning afterwards.
What I aim to do is create something tasty that requires minimal effort and fuss, so that if my ladies decide it’s not for them, I can just move on to the next dish, eat the leftover myself with a bit of seasoning, and share it with my other half.
The next Toddler recipe will be live this Tuesday.
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Today we’re making some Garden risoto one of my daughter’s all-time favorites it’s very simple and the whole thing Cooks in 15 minutes let’s do it first we make our makeshift vegetable stock stove on we just bring some water to a boil today I have purple sprouting broccoli but for me tender stem broccoli
Works the best for this dish for me the fettes are better off blanched and just served on its own and very simple we just dice them similar size to the peas so that they’re all bite-sized and we mince a bit of celery just to sweat them for some extra depth
Of flavors you can add some Mint shalots or minc onions but for me you’re cutting up a whole onion for very little I wouldn’t bother for the celery you want them relatively fine you can use a grater if you want as well just to save you some time once the water’s boiling
We add our diced broccoli and some frozen peas unless you have access to a Pea Farm you’re almost always better off with frozen peas because the moment they picked the sweetness goes downhill like this and frozen peas you could keep them in your freezer and they’re ready anytime wonderful addition to toddler
Food amazing sweetness and beautiful vibrant color so you want to blanch them just so that the broccoli is softened and they’ve imparted a tiny bit of sweetness to this liquid which we’ll use to cook our Roto once the broccolis are softened and the peas are bright green
We fish them out you don’t want to cook the crap out of them you want them to still have a bit of a crunch and a bit of texture now we cook our Roto medium medium high heat olive oil in and we add our minced celery to
Sweat you want to hear gentle Sizzle but what you’re aiming to do is to cook them without color you’re not trying to Brown the celery you’re trying to sweat them evaporate the water content concentrate their flavors you can do this as fast as slow as you wish so if you’re not
Confident with your control lower the heat a bit it will take a tiny bit longer but it will be a bit more fail prooof you just want to move them around and this will impart some depth of flavors to the Garden risoto perfect if you ever feel like this is about to
Brown or burn just lower the heat a tiny bit and you’ll know it’s ready when you see Steam stops to come up that means most of the water content has been evaporated and the flavors have been concentrated now we can add our a Boro rice and we toast them slightly so that
They’re also coated with this olive oil now this is Toler food after all so we’re not going for some crazy alente texture with cooking the rice what I like to do is for the first half of the cooking time I add about double the quantity of vegetable stock to the rice
For it to cook and after 5 minutes I’ll come back and start stirring it rubbing the rice against each other releasing the starch and that’s what’s going to give us that thick sauce likee texture that we associate with a good resultto so 5 minutes after about 5 minutes we start
To play Chef this is normally when I invite my daughter to stand here and we cook together that way I feel like they’re more emotionally invested into the dish so they would have to eat it even if it sucked but it won’t suck we start to move the grains around and help
The starch release and that would thicken the Roto creating this wonderful wonderful texture keep topping it up slowly just enough to cover everything it’s a fun exercise you’re basically drawing a circle with your right hand and you’re drawing a straight line with your left when you go together you get
Starch if you get B you can switch actually I don’t know if I can switch okay Circle Line oh this is hot this is really hot back to you back to normal now you all know I’m right-handed you adjust the heat to your comfort level so
I’m happy at medium high but you can do it at a slower Pace especially because we’re not aiming for Al Dente there’s no real restrictions on cooking time top up if you’re not used to making risoto you can always find on the back of the label the actual cooking time required
So divided by two the first half is when you could just boil it with more water than you think you need cuz you can always reduce and you can even time the second half just to give yourself a better gauge in terms of how much water
To add and how much time you really need to Mother it and of course if you’re in doubt taste now once you’re happy with the dness of the rice we’re finishing it by getting to the right consistency so what is the right consistency well for
Me is when you try to draw a canal in between they would part for a decent amount of time before coming back so this is still very watery so we can reduce a bit more same test getting better we’re almost there and again to avoid burning we reduce the heat by a
Bit that’s what you’re looking for now we add our Frozen pece don’t have all of them you can always save some on the side and serve it to her or or to him later you want a nice balance between rice and vegetables you don’t want this to become a vegetable dish just enough
Time for them to warm up they cook to perfect already so again perfect now we can plate for Roto I like to use a big plate and plate one thin layer not to win a toddler’s Mitchell and star but actually to help the food cool down
Without the use of a fan so that they don’t stick together and again presentation is so important from my own experience for Toler food and there you have it my daughter’s Garden Roto I really hope you enjoy that’s a wrap do I even need to take photos