Old dog. New tricks.

Ha! Just when I thought life couldn't get any better than porridge for breakfast and soup for lunch, here comes risotto for tea.

As a teenage vegetarian, I hated risotto. Together (though not literally) with stuffed aubergines, it was the thing that other people's mothers made me on special occasions to mark me out as a special needs friend. It was also a regular vegetarian option at college. In both instances it usually featured tinned asparagus, and usually made me want to heave.

I've had maybe one or two good risottos since -- those prepared by my friends H and V particularly stand out. But I have generally steered clear, working on the following received and learnt wisdom: risotto has to be star of the show. You can't do it in advance, for huge numbers of people, or as a second string dish to whatever the carnivores are eating. And I've never even thought about attempting it myself.

Until tonight. On Tuesday plumbing S and I had dinner with K, and she made the best risotto I've ever tasted, which featured courgettes, feta and smoked salmon. It was just fabulous. I was inspired to try and emulate it, and gave it a go this evening, to make M and housemate S feel good following our house meeting (these are usually kind of fraught). I didn't have the recipe but I'd talked to K, and I referred to techniques given by both Nigella and Nigel.

And it was glorious. Not quite as good as K's (I put the courgettes in a bit too early, and I did rush the end slightly as Blackpool had started, and I didn't want to miss the Best Thing On Television This Century) but I was v pleased, not least to have opened the door to a whole new culinary technique.

It could easily fall into the select list of bountiful yet accomplished dishes which I rely on to impress people who believe that no one as scruffy and meat-eschewing as me could possibly get anything reasonable on the table from scratch in 45 minutes.

If it does (and time will tell) it will be the third dish in my repertoire to rely on a combination of fish and rice to deliver. If you add M's excellent kedgeree, there's a pattern emerging somewhere.

joella