I’m in the middle of moving at the moment, for the second time in three months. Renting is a pain in the backside.

So, for the last week or two, I’ve been avoiding buying food and have been making an effort to empty my fridge and freezer. It would have been a bit easier if I hadn’t decided to buy a cabbage a few weeks ago. I used last night’s dinner to help me get rid of unwanted fridge items, like leftover bits of carrots, onions and so forth.

I decided to go for an adaptation of this Rick Stein recipe for sausages and puy lentils since I already had some cumberland sausages in the freezer. The basic idea of my version was the same, except I added my fridge leftovers of chopped carrot, pancetta, onions and extra rosemary to the lentils.

The bubbling pot of lentils was tasting great but I had a small problem. I had nothing to serve it with. I’d already used up all my potatoes. I thought rice would be good but I seemed to have run out of basmati and long grain. However, I did have a box of  arborio which I decided would be better than nothing.

I was right, it was better than nothing but it really, really was not anywhere near as good as plain old long grain. It had a strange, almost waxy texture that wasn’t very nice.  It seems there is a good reason why this rice is reserved for risottos!  Fortunately the sausages were yummy, which more than made up for it.

So the moral of the story is, don’t try boiling arborio. But you probably knew that anyway.