A super healthy fish & peafood parsnip risotto

If you are suffering PTAS (post take away stress) or have overindulged on naughty treats, this may be the meal for you. If you on the other hand enjoy tasty and satisfying food, move along to find another recipe. Sometimes you can have both. This is not one of those occasions. Don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad dinner, just not great. Instead it is one of those that tells you in every single bite how good it is for you, boasting with its smug healthiness and you end up wanting to slap it off the plate. If only it had been a taste sensation, what a winner it would have been. Sadly, that wasn't the case. 

Perhaps I brought it all on myself, by not following the original recipe, which in all fairness looked amazing. It was a baked risotto with cod, posted by someone super health conscious on Pinterest. At least he claimed the recipe to be super healthy with its fish and vegetables. I did however decide to go one step further and swap the arborio rice for blitzed parsnips. Was this a mistake? Should I have left it as it was? In my defence, I wanted to cook it, but I didn't want to eat rice. I took a risk and it didn't work out as planned.

Reading the recipe, I realised that there weren't enough seasoning for an amazing meal and I considered raiding the spice rack. For some odd reason I chose to stick with the original guidelines, hoping that it would be enough for a subtly nice fish dinner. Instead of cod, I had less fancy coley fillets to play with, but by adding prawns, mussels and a red pepper there was still a richness of substance.

The recipe suggested to add mushrooms to a fish meal. That's normally not something I would consider, although I have been known to do it during fridge clearing cooking missions. In my kitchen, mushrooms are usually reserved for meat or vegetarian creations. I'm not saying that you can't combine mushrooms with fish, only that I normally don't. Anyway, I decided to do what I was told.

Should you want to recreate this recipe, it is all on you. Remember that you have been warned. Even so, I shall share my kitchen actions below.

3 large parsnips, blitz into rice

1 pepper, roughly chopped

200 g mushrooms, sliced

150 g prawns & mussels

1 onion, finely chopped

1 vegetable stock cube

600 g white fish fillets

3 tomatoes, quartered

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 leek, chopped

2 garlic cloves

salt & pepper

3 tsp paprika

parsley

oil

1. Get all ingredients out.

I used frozen prawns and mussels. They defrosted in the oven while cooking.

2. Chop the onion and leek.

3. Soften the onion and leek in a little oil in a saucepan.

4. Chop the mushrooms, pepper and garlic cloves.

5. Add the mushrooms, pepper and garlic to the onion mixture and cook until soft. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Mix well.

6. Add tomato puree and mix well.

7. Peel and chop the parsnips, then blitz them into rice in a food processor.

I opted for large grained 'rice' this time.

8. Add the parsnip rice to the mixture inte saucepan.

9. You can either premix the stock or crumble the stock cube straight into the rice mixture and add water, whatever you fancy.

Personally I prefer the second option, as I can better judge how much liquid to add without losing any of the flavours from the stock cube. I ended up using 1 pint of water. Remember that the parsnip won't soak up much of the liquid, so you need to be careful with how much you add.

10. Mix in the frozen seafood.

11. Transfer the mixture to a deep oven dish and add the tomatoes. Leave space for the fish.

12. Season the fish fillets with salt and pepper and fry them off for a few minutes, until half cooked.

They were meant to get a nice seared surface, but they didn't. This is when I started to realise that my meal wasn't going to look as nice as the one in the photo on Pinterest. Even so, I pressed on. Too late to stop at this stage.

13. Nestle the fish fillets in between the tomatoes and try to make it look nice.

14. Bake at 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes, until the fish is done and the tomatoes have softened.

I had to admit that looking at it closely, I actually had hope of a nice dinner. Yes, I'm gullible.

15. Dish up and try not to be too disappointed. You wouldn't be if you had listened to my warning.

Will I be making this again? No no no, definitely not.