Blue Cheese and Mushroom Risotto

My flatmates have expressed their concern for the rate I go through Basics food items, only to leave them lying around in the kitchen while I fret over the possible recipes I can use them in. More often than not, I fail, and am forced to throw grossly expired items away. I am more or less open to ideas, so if you have a creative solution to make the most of the Italian hard cheese and blue cheese sitting in my fridge right now, feel free to contribute through the comments.

For now however, I have managed to come across something interesting. I have not come across blue cheese risotto before, but there are several recipes floating around the Internet for such a dish. When I saw one that incorporated mushrooms, hence negating the need to cook meat separately to make a complete meal, I was sold. The recipe originally appeared on delicious magazine, but I've come up with my own version, shared here.

Dice some mushrooms, garlic and onion. Fry the mushrooms until cooked, then set aside. Add more oil to the pan to brown the onions and garlic.

Toast about 3/4 cup of Basics rice in the wok until slightly brown. Add a glass of Basics white wine and continue to stir until the rice has absorbed some of the liquid.

Crumble half (not one as I did) cube of Basics chicken stock into the wok, and slowly add a bit of boiling water at a time until you have up to about 1.5 cups of water in the pan per person. Cover for about 10-15 minutes.

Finally, stir in Basics Italian hard cheese and Blue Cheese and add in the mushrooms. Stir everything together until the entire thing is consistent.

I'm not sure why I ended up with the brown hue as pictured, though I suspect that it's due to the use of the Basics chicken stock cube. Reducing it by half and perhaps using vegetable stock instead would probably result in a better colour, and improve the flavour by not having so much sodium and glutamate. The italian hard cheese, blue cheese and mushrooms also contributed to the glutamate levels in the risotto, resulting in a rather meaty flavour but leaving me very thirsty afterwards. I suspect this can be counteracted by reducing the amount of cheese involved, since the risotto can already hold itself together.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
British Blue Cheese	£6.49/kg	~ 200g	+£0.86/kg	Shropshire Blue. Proper Stilton will cost even more.