I love rice! 

To me, it’s comfort food. Rice is a food that my mom used to frequently cook during my childhood.

The other day, when I bought some canned artichoke, I didn’t have any plan on what to cook with it. I was thinking about Italy, one of my favorite destinations.

It didn’t take me long to decide on creating this risotto recipe, as the Italians call the cooked rice.

As I already had the rest of the ingredients, I started to work because dinner time was approaching.

INGREDIENTS:

I used the following ingredients:

• 1 cup of brown risotto
• 8 canned artichoke hearts
• ½ cup chopped black olives
• 1 cup of capers
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 3 fresh thyme threads
• a handful of fresh basil for decoration
• 1 tip of a knife chili flakes
• the juice from ¼ lime 

HOW TO DO IT:

Rinse the rice twice with cold water and set it to boil following the instructions on the package.

In a separate pan, throw the fresh thyme threads and chili flakes into the hot coconut oil for some extra flavor and stir for 1 minute

Add the finely chopped onion to the oil and turn the heat down. Stir fry for 3-4 minutes, until it turns slightly transparent.

In the meantime rinse the artichoke hearts, drain the water and cut them. I cut each heart first in half, then lengthwise because they’re quite sticky and not that easy to cut.

Add the artichoke to the onion and stir fry them for another 3-4 minutes. Then add the capers and olives and let them cook for 10 minutes stirring frequently so they don’t stick to the pan.

With a ladle take some of the boiling water from the rice was  (approx. ½ cup) and added it to the vegetables; allow 2 more minutes to cook.

Drain the rice and add it to the vegetables. Allow 2 more minutes to cook, stirring constantly and IT’S DONE!

Transfer it on plates, add some basil leaves and grate some parmesan on top of it. Serve it with a green salad aside.

This delicious risotto goes also well with a cucumber & dill salad.

Even if you don’t have all the ingredients needed for this recipe, this shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a good recipe. Be creative, replace the ingredients, add, play, and have fun birthing your own recipe. 

The satisfaction you will get enjoying your own recipe will be worth the while.

If you find this risotto as delicious as I did, please let me know by posting a comment below.

Enjoy!