Vegan brunch: Fennel Risotto, Smoky Shittakes, and Fried Bananas

So Cathy got a copy of Vegan Brunch to give away on Planet Veggie and my friend Tracy won it but she lives in the US so I said I'd send it to her if I could make something out of it first. Meg and I flipped through it and in the savory section there was a lot of tofu, which I don't mind but Meg refuses to eat, but I didn't want to wait until I felt like making brunch to do something with this and I really wanted savory for dinner and not sweet.

In the end I decided to make Fennel Breakfast Risotto, which was REALLY REALLY good. I cheated a little in that I didn't buy quite enough vegetable stock and so I topped it up with a chicken stock cube and a little extra water. So not exactly vegan, but vegan in spirit. Other than that my only issues were that a cup and a half of chopped shallots is a LOT of shallots to chop by hand and I really wish I had a food processor, and that risotto is a lot of work in the stirring (not unique to this recipe, obviously). This was really great, I'll be saving the recipe to make this again.

I also made Smoky Shittakes, which were meant to be sauteed shittakes cut in half, but I didn't read the recipe carefully and sliced them instead. I also didn't find any liquid smoke so just used soy sauce. I think it actually worked out though. I topped the risotto with them, and they added a really nice salty nutty almost-crunch to the (clearly slightly underseasoned) risotto.

As a side we had bananas, dredged in flour/ginger/cinnamon, and fried. I neglected to tap off the flour (too many pans going at the same time, clearly) so they were a little too bready, and because I had bananas instead of plantains they weren't sweet enough to offer the counterpoint to the savory risotto & mushrooms. If I were to do them again I'd put a little sugar in the breading. Instead we put some honey over them, and it turned out great.

Thanks, Cathy, for the competition, and Tracy, for letting me borrow your book for a bit. Let me know how you get on!