Copy Cat in the Kitchen: Risotto, Spinach, and Kale Cakes with Parmesan

The idea for this installment of Copy Cat in the Kitchen was to have a healthful starter ready to go before the hungries reduced the Cat Clan to hissing fur balls. Alas, the quick, healthful recipe I chose to take the edge off before dinner took much longer than I thought it would (more on that below) and didn’t matter anyway because half of the Clan weren’t at the table yet when it was ready. My Better Half (B1/2) and Rambunctious 9-Year-Old Boy (R9B) were late getting home from across town.

I made the Risotto, Spinach, and Kale Cakes with Parmesan from How to Feed a Family by Laura Keough and Ceri Marsh, one of the many non-vegetarian cookbooks with veg options routinely sent to VT HQ. The title of the recipe is spot on, save for the eggs that bind it all together. My hope was I’d be able to entice Picky 2-Year-Old Girl (P2G) into eating a cake because it has a bunch of things she likes. Basically, beige foods: risotto, Parmesan, eggs. I even had her help a little.

As for preparing the recipe, it wasn’t too consuming. Unless you’re trying to occupy a toddler while you spend 45 minutes making risotto for said recipe. Risotto requires more attention than a toddler. Once that was done I had to assemble the cakes, which took another 30 minutes with starts and stops due to toddler-supervision issues. Then the recipe had to bake: add 20 minutes. To top it off, this was the first night of being back in Standard Time, so it didn’t occur until I was in the midst of cooking that to our stomachs I was an hour behind.

Well, P2G’s not as gullible as her old man sometimes wishes, because she flat out refused to sample the finished product. I don’t even have a quote from her to share. She just looked at me as if to say, “Are you kidding me, Daddy? There’s green stuff in here. I wasn’t born yesterday!”

Upon arrival, R9B was antsy. All-day robotics competitions do not calm a rambunctious boy. He sampled the risotto cakes (after inquiring about the ingredients list), claimed it deserved an A and ignored the remaining uneaten half on his plate. So I guess he meant C+.

B1/2 and I loved these things. We were both eyeing R9B’s uneaten half as well as the final cake we were both being too polite to inhale. I made a whole lot more risotto than the recipe called for, so I can make more. These things will make great lunches, even cold.

The Scorecard

Two-and-a-half clean plates out of four.