Purple purple purple (with green and white)

Purple is my favourite colour...it always has been. Sure, I've dabbled with green and orange and red...but purple always comes up tops.  A week or so ago, Dom over at Belleau Kitchen posted a gorgeous blog about the beautiful purple carrots and purple gooseberries he's been growing in his garden...and I was so jealous...I miss my little garden (not that I had exotic purple carrots growing).

To quell the green eyed monster I planned a labour-intensive beetroot risotto for the weekend.  The recipe comes from Denis Cotter's For the Love of Food (I just can't get enough of it)...easy-ish to follow (lots of steps) and promises to deliver a proper beetroot coloured risotto (unlike some which are washed out pink).  To get the intensive purpley colour you have to boil and then roast the beetroot and then puree half of it to add to the stock.  The puree was a gorgeous deep purple colour (and tasted amazing) but when I added it to the stock...it turned pink....hmmmm.  I figure either I had too much stock or too weak a stock...or...

The risotto is finished with cooked and peeled broad beans (to add a nice bite), drops of creamy goats cheese (we all know how well goats cheese goes with beetroot), and a drizzle of lemon fennel oil.  Not as deep a purple colour as I would have liked, but really tasty.