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Creamy Goat Cheese & Roasted Red Pepper Risoni (orzo)

January 15, 2025

The name’s a tongue twister, but this dish is a breeze to make! Goat cheese and roasted red peppers are the shortcuts for this creamy, smoky risoni recipe. Under $20 for 4 servings, ready in 20 minutes. Serve as a meal or side — it’s like a Mediterranean risotto!

Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Risoni / Orzo

Goat Cheese & Roasted Red Pepper Risoni (orzo)

Today’s recipe is a quick risoni dish that’s simple to make but a little bit special thanks to a bit of goat cheese stirred through which gives it a creamy edge. The distinctive, mild flavour of goat cheese with a touch of tang works perfectly with the Mediterranean flavours here, especially in this oozy risotto-like risoni recipe.

It’s one of those dishes that’s fast to make – yet company worthy. Especially if you keep harping on and on about how good goat’s cheese is. Wait, is that just me?? 😂

Goat cheese for Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Risoni / Orzo — Goat cheese

Creamy Goat Cheese & Roasted Red Pepper Risoni (orzo)

Ingredients in this risoni recipe

Here’s all you need to make this. If you don’t have goat’s cheese, you can substitute in a pinch with Danish feta which has a similar flavour and also melts. Else, sour cream, yogurt or even cream plus a squeeze of lemon will have a similar flavour.

Risoni / orzo – Called risoni here in Australia and Italy but orzo in most of the rest of the world, I have a big soft spot for these little rice-shaped pastas. I love that it cooks quickly and that it tastes like risotto (minus all the patient-stirring work!).

Find risoni in the pasta aisle at regular grocery stores. Substitute with other small pasta like ditalini, star shaped pasta or those tiny novelty pasta shapes (imagine this with dinosaur pasta!).
Goat’s cheese (closer up photo above) – Cheese made from goat rather than cow’s milk and has a distinct tang to it. This recipe uses the goat’s cheese that has a texture like Danish feta (ie the soft creamy type of feta), picture above. When you crumble it, it smears on your fingers and when heated, it melts.

Find it at regular grocery stores, usually sold in log form. Even my corner store sells it!

Substitute with (in order of priority) Danish feta, sour cream, full fat Greek yogurt or regular cream plus a squeeze of lemon.
Roasted red peppers / capsicum (aka bell peppers) – These are store bought jars with strips of red capsicum that have been charred and blistered so it has a wonderful smokey flavour and the flesh is super soft and sweet so it melds beautifully into the sauce. *Also see info box below for different names for roasted peppers*

Find them in the pickle section of regular grocery stores though you can find them for considerably better values (especially in large jars) at continental and European delis and produce shops.

Substitute – Sauté fresh strips of capsicum, zucchini half moons, asparagus, mushrooms or any vegetable you’d like, though you won’t get the same smoky flavour. Or use other jarred/canned vegetables like artichokes, asparagus, sun dried tomatoes.

Fire roasted red pepper strips for Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Risoni / Orzo — Fire roasted red pepper strips

Tomato passata – Smooth pureed, strained pure tomatoes, sometimes labelled “tomato puree” in the US (here’s a photo of Mutti tomato passata sold at Walmart). It’s readily available in Australian supermarkets nowadays, alongside pasta sauces and costs around the same as canned tomato. Passata is excellent for making thick, smooth tomato based sauces, like we are doing in today’s risoni recipe. More on tomato passata here.

Substitute: For those of you in the US, substituted with the what you call tomato puree (like Hunts). Otherwise, use canned crushed tomato (though the sauce colour won’t be such a vibrant red colour).
Kalamata olives – Adds fabulous little briny pops into this dish, and flavours the sauce.
Red onion and garlic – The aromatic flavour bases for this recipe.

Roasted red peppers – different names and jar labels

What we call capsicum here in Australia, NZ and some other parts of the world are called bell peppers in the US and sweet peppers or just peppers in the UK and most parts of Europe.

So sometimes here in Australia, they will be sold in jars labelled “roasted red peppers”. It’s not spicy peppers (ie chilli) that we think of! It is capsicum. 🙂

Finishing: basil or parsley – or nothing

Finding myself with an abundance of extra basil from stress-testing the basil storing method I shared last week, I decided on a whim to finish the dish with basil and it made it even better! Though until this week, I’ve always been finishing it with just a small amount of parsley.

Basil or parsley for Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Risoni / Orzo

But in all honesty, there is so much going on here already with the olives and goat’s cheese and roasted peppers, it is still 100% delicious without any fresh herbs. I’d probably add a teaspoon of dried oregano into the sauce though!

How to make this risoni recipe

It takes around 20 minutes to make from start to finish, including preparation. There’s little chopping to be done!

Workflow – Get the risoni boiling then start on the sauce. The cooked risoni can just sit in the colander until you’re ready to stir it in.

Cook risoni until a tiny bit under done ie. very al dente. The centre shouldn’t be raw-pasta hard but just a bit firmer than you’d like to eat. Reason: the risoni will keep cooking in the sauce so we don’t want it fully cooked at this stage.
Reserve pasta water – Just before draining, scoop out a mugful of the pasta cooking water. We will be using this to loosen the olive pasta sauce. It’s good practice to use the pasta cooking cooking water because it’s got starch from the pasta in it which helps the sauce cling to the little bits of risoni (I preach this for every single pasta recipe I share!).

Drain and rinse – Drain the risoni then give it a quick rinse under cold tap water to rinse off excess starch. If you skip this step, the sauce can get a little too “gluey” from excess starch, and also prevents the risoni from sticking together as it’s sitting in the colander waiting to be used.
Sauté – Using a large deep skillet (the one I use is 30cm/12″) on high heat, cook the onion first for around 2 minutes until it starts to soften. Then add the strips of capsicum/peppers and garlic. Cook for another 1 minute until the garlic is light golden, and the onion is pretty floppy.

Sauce – Add the pasta and olives, then stir.
Simmer – Bring to a simmer then lower the head and simmer for 3 minutes on medium heat, stirring every now and then. During this step, the briny, salty flavour from the olives and the smoky flavour from the capsicum/peppers releases into the sauce which adds flavour. YUM!

Risoni – Add the cooked risoni, salt and about 1/2 cup of the reserved pasta cooking water. Stir through until the risoni is coated in the sauce.
Basil and melty goat’s cheese – Add most of the goat’s cheese (reserve a bit for garnish) and stir it through until it melts and becomes creamy (it melts quickly). Then stir through the basil (if using), just before serving.

Then you’re done! Ladle into bowls or into a large serving bowl, sprinkle with goat’s cheese (or just add a clump if it’s soft and sticky – more impactful!) and little basil leaves or chopped basil. Then dig in!

How to serve this risoni dish

This is substantial enough and certainly interesting enough to be a meal by itself. Essentially, this is a vegetarian pasta dish (despite the repetitive comparisons I make to risotto!) which incorporates a decent amount of vegetables (tomato, onion, capsicum/bell peppers) so you don’t need to add a side dish to round out your meal.

However, it’d also be terrific served as a side dish with a simple piece of protein. I actually meant to photograph it with a piece of pan fried fish or prawns/shrimp plonked on top, cooked with just salt and pepper. Then the idea would be to eat the protein with the oozy risoni playing multiple roles here – like the sauce as well as a starch and vegetable side.

Try it with my everyday marinated chicken breast (named as such because it’s made with pantry staples), Italian marinated chicken, Lemon Garlic Marinated Pork Chops or pile over some Greek Lamb Meatballs (imagine that!).

Hope you enjoy! – Nagi x