Risotto

My husband and I are in many ways chalk and cheese. I like my woodstove and vegetable garden and piles of second-hand crockery. He likes minimalism and technology and plain white plates and keeping things as simple as possible. This is by way of explaining that the chicken which was the mainspring of this dish was roasted the day before by my husband, in his microwave. I know it's shocking, but I have to tell the truth.

I collected the bones after it had been demolished and kept the remaining meat (which is not that much after the husband has been at it). Then I simmered the bones on my stove for several hours with a bayleaf, an onion, a carrot and a branch of lemon thyme. The chicken had been "roasted" (if you can call it that) in a bag with a lemon up its fundament, so I decided to give a lemon flavour to the risotto.

When the stock was ready I put some butter in my heavy frying pan and gently fried some garlic for a minute, then added the rice (quantity? Half a packet..?) and stirred it round. More lemon thyme (leaves only), and a bit of chopped sage. After a few minutes I added the juice of a lemon, gave it half a minute and then I started to add the stock, which was genuinely SHIMMERING in its pot next to the frying pan. This is something I have never achieved on a conventional cooker, as I can't get the burner low enough. But you can always find a spot on the woodburner which is just the temperature you require.

Then I sat and played Scrabble on Facebook because my laptop is right next to the cooker, on the kitchen table. Perfect. Every few minutes (between moves) I hopped up and added a couple of ladlefuls of stock. As soon as the rice has absorbed all the liquid, you add some more.

One continues in this way until the rice (which should of course be arborio rice, but never mind if you have the wrong kind, it is not essential) is perfectly cooked, i.e. still has a bite to it.

If you run out of stock, you can always add water. But please don't use a stock cube. Please.

Then you add whatever else you fancy - the chicken meat of course, peas are nice and give a bit of colour, wild mushrooms (I used dried ones, which had soaked for half an hour) .... and cook for another ten minutes or so.

It was delicious, and there was enough left over for me to have for breakfast the next day. Cost: negligible.

Note: This cannot be achieved in a microwave.