Creamy Mushroom and Chestnut Wild Rice

This is a recipe that I made up around Christmas time, and being that I've not been cooking as much lately due to illness, I have dug it out of the archives of my laptop! Sorry its not very seasonal but if you have any chestnuts still around this does make good use of them!

At the time one of the biggest mysteries within my Knorr hamper was a vaccum pack of chestnuts. Or at least I hoped they were. The packaging looked weirdly a little like brains, all brownish and knobbly! Certainly not easy on the eye!

Whilst I certainly knew of chestnuts, I’d never really tried or done much if anything before with them, barring this past years fireworks night where I had the chance to try some hot on the bbq…!...Fortunately I liked them and subsequently singed my fingers greedily opening up several of them!

I had googled for ideas, and ideas a plenty abounded but none really stood out/ matched what I had in…so I decided my usual planning route of 'what's in the fridge' + 'what do I fancy' and came up with this creamy rice dish! The chestnuts add a certain sweetness and soft crunch. Mostly I was grateful I’d made something edible with them and that they hadn’t gone to waste!

This is a dinner for one – though easily up-scaled.

Ingredients:

Handful closed cup mushrooms, quartered
6 vacuum pack chestnuts, roughly crumbled
1/2 tsp garlic puree
2 heaped tbsp cream cheese
1/2 tbsp flora cuisine - or use oil/ butter
Sprinkle of dried Thyme
75g Basmati with wild rice

Boil the rice as per packet instructions. Meanwhile heat the oil in a small frying pan, and saite the musrooms over a medium heat until nicely browned - around 5 minutes.

Stir in the thyme, chestnuts and garlic, warm through, reduce the heat and stir through the cream cheese with 3 tbsp of warm water to loosen. Season to taste, and serve with the rice.