Portobello mushroom and wet garlic risotto

'Wet garlic'...it doesn't exactly sound appealing, does it. But it is! Wet garlic is very young garlic, harvested before the bulbs form. I'd never tried it before it turned up in this week's veg box, but like wild garlic leaves it has a fresh, garlicky flavour and it behaves rather like a leek, with the slices breaking up into little rounds when you cook them.

As I had some lovely fat portobello mushrooms as well, I decided risotto was the only way to go. Mushroom risotto is never going to photograph well, but here we go...!

I don't really have a recipe for risotto - I just do the usual thing of frying up some onions (and in this case the mushrooms and garlic) and adding some wine, which I let bubble until reduced, and then I add the rice (80g per person) and stir it around for a minute or so before adding stock bit by bit and letting it all soak into the simmering rice. I don't add any cheese or cream if I'm cooking for myself, as the starch in the rice makes the whole thing lovely and creamy anyway, but as a special treat a handful of grated Cheddar, hard goat's cheese or Parmesan would be lovely scattered over the top! My risotto was topped off with some ribbons of basil and lots of black pepper.