Seems like Monday was a day for all things green.

• Green Love Green Smoothie
• We painted the hull of our boat Green (we thought it was blue but seems it’s green)
• We had Spinach Pearl Barley Risotto for dinner

That was a lot of spinach to have in one day – but at least we’ve not done our usual ‘throw a bag of spinach away because we bought too much’.

This is one of the best risottos I’ve ever eaten. And it isn’t even made with rice.

Don’t let the green put you off. Green stuff (as I mentioned for the smoothie) always looks bit weird – especially when it is as vibrant as this green!

The recipe is pretty basic – as are all the recipes in Honestly Healthy for Life. Saute some red onions and garlic, add the pearl barley, add some bouillon, cook like a risotto – and at the end add the pureed spinach, some lemon juice and zest. Dead easy.

I found it pretty hard to puree spinach leave in a Vitamix so I added some of the bouillon to get it going – after that it was all plain sailing.

The flavours in this dish are so simple and all come together beautifully. Spinach, garlic and lemon are always amazing in a salad – and they flavours transfer beautifully into this risotto.

This took less that 40 minutes to make and was awesome. This is a definite keeper and probably now means I’ll never throw a bag of spinach away ever again. I usually have all the other ingredients knocking about anyway – so this will probably end up being one of my emergency dinners.

The book suggests that you can substitute the spinach for beetroot. I imagine you could substitute any pureeable (I know that’s not a word) vegetable that has lots of flavour. Maybe I’ll try that later in the week ( I have a few raw beetroot in the fridge).

I seem to have been cooking from this books forever; but it’s only been 10 days. I’ve only one recipe left to try from my shortlist – which contains pomegranate and sweetcorn. After that I’ll move on to something else.

The coming week I think I’ll be cooking from Ottolenghi’s books!