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    Risotto! Risotto!
    Risotto! Risotto!
    Risotto! Risotto!
    Ebook292 pages2 hours

    Risotto! Risotto!

    By Valentina Harris

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Prized for its texture, flavour and versatility, risotto has been part of the Italian diet since the eighth century and is one of Italy's most famous dishes. This revised and updated edition of Valentina Harris' seminal work shows you how to prepare, cook and serve this iconic dish using ingredients from the humble tomato to the much sought-after truffle.

    With a fully updated introduction and some brand new recipes, as well as background information on the history of this famous dish, Valentina provides essential information on the variety of rice that can be used for risotto and how to make the all-important stock. Recipes are supplemented by beautiful photography of the dishes by Ian Garlick and a step-by-step guide to the perfect risotto.

    This is the perfect book for any risotto lover.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateFeb 9, 2017
    ISBN9781472933218
    Risotto! Risotto!

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      Book preview

      Risotto! Risotto! - Valentina Harris

      FOR DAME CHRISSIE WALKER

      Thank you for the introduction.

      Contents

      Introduction

      The History of Risotto

      Types of Rice

      General Notes on the Recipes

      Il Brodo: the Stock

      Brodo di Pollo

      Brodo di Pesce

      Brodo di Manzo o di Vitello

      Brodo di Cacciaggione o di Anatra

      Brodo Vegetale

      Making Risotto

      Cheese and Eggs

      Risotto all’Uovo

      Risotto alla Parmigiana

      Risotto al Gorgonzola

      Risotto alla Fontina

      Torta di Riso Salata

      Vegetables

      Risotto all’Aglio

      Risotto con Asparagi

      Risotto ai Carciofi

      Fiori di Zucchine Fritti

      Risotto di Zucchine (con i Fiori Fritti)

      Risotto alla Siciliana

      Risotto di Rape Rosse

      Risotto Valtellinese

      Risotto di Bieta

      Risotto di Spinaci con le Noci

      Orzotto con le Cipolle Rosse

      Risotto ai Peperoni Arrosto

      Risotto al Radicchio

      Orzotto alla Primavera

      Risi e Bisi

      Risotto di Finocchi

      Risotto con la Zucca

      Timballo di Riso e Melanzane alla Palermitana

      Risotto di Melanzane

      Riso al Salto

      Arancini alla Caprese

      Mushrooms, Herbs, Spices and Wild Greens

      Risotto alla Genovese

      Risotto con i Funghi

      Risotto di Funghi al Pomodoro

      Risotto al Tartufo Classico

      Risotto al Tartufo

      Risotto allo Zafferano

      Risotto al Pesto

      Risotto con Pomodori e Basilico

      Risotto al Prezzemolo

      Risotto d’Aglio Selvatico

      Risotto con la Rucola

      Risotto all’Ortica

      Fish and Shellfish

      Risotto di Gamberetti Bruni

      Risotto di Gamberetti

      Risotto di Gamberetti Velocissimo

      Il Risotto di Fiammetta

      Risotto di Farro con le Vongole e i Carciofi

      Risotto con le Cozze

      Risotto con le Capesante

      Risotto con i Frutti di Mare

      Risotto di Farro con il Granchio

      Risotto all’Aragosta

      Risotto con il Nero di Seppie

      Risotto con le Seppie

      Risotto con l’Anguilla

      Risotto allo Sgombro con Rosmarino

      Risotto di Sardine al Pomodoro

      Risotto al Salmone

      Risotto con la Bottarga

      Supplì al Tonno

      Meat

      Risotto di Fegatini

      Risotto Sardo allo Zafferano

      Risotto alla Milanese Classico

      Risotto al Ragù col Pomodoro

      Risotto alle Rane

      Risotto al Coniglio con le Olive

      Risotto alla Lepre

      Risotto al Ragù di Cinghiale

      Risotto alla Sbirraglia

      Risotto al Prosciutto di Parma

      Risotto con Pancetta e Porri

      Risotto alle Animelle

      Risotto alla Luganega

      Risotto al Ragù Bianco

      Risotto all’Anatra

      Ragù alla Bolognese per Arancini

      Arancini al Ragù con la Scamorza

      Supplì al Telefono

      Arancini di Riso con Piselli e Pancetta

      Fruit, Alcohol and Sweet

      Risotto al Limone

      Risotto di Fragole

      Risotto con le Mele

      Risotto allo Champagne

      Risotto al Barolo

      Risotto al Vino Bianco

      Risotto al Vino Rosso

      Riso Dolce al Cioccolato

      Torta di Riso Dolce

      Acknowledgements

      U ris u ness in l’acqua e il mor in du vin

      This old Italian saying basically means:

      ‘Don’t drink water when eating risotto!’

      Introduction

      Risotto was the very first thing I ever learned to cook and it is my earliest childhood memory. It was when I was about four years old and I can remember exactly the chair I stood upon, the feel of the gas ring heat near my legs, the way the wooden spoon felt in my hand and the intense perfume of the rice as it rippled and bubbled in the huge pot. Perhaps that was the moment I became hooked on cooking, and on risotto in particular, although maybe it is something to do with my family history – my ancestors, the Dukes of Milan, were very involved in the development of rice cultivation in northern Italy.

      Risotto is such a marvellous multi-purpose dish. It makes fantastic party food as it can easily be eaten with a fork whilst standing up; it is popular with children; it can be as expensive and extravagant or as cheap and cheerful as you like; and it is endlessly adaptable. As you can see from the recipes gathered together in this collection, there are very few ingredients that cannot be used to make a perfectly satisfying risotto.

      MAKING RISOTTO

      Anyone who tells you making risotto is easy has obviously never made it properly, and you should not believe them. Risotto is not difficult to make, but it really is not easy to get absolutely right. And it is hard to make in larger quantities because the pot needed would have to be really enormous for the heat to circulate properly through all the rice grains – if not big enough, the result would be an unevenly cooked dish. Making risotto correctly needs concentration and focus as well as good basic ingredients.

      The specifics for making risotto are very simple: you need the right kind of rice, the best possible stock (except for a few exceptions that use water or wine), a heavy-bottomed pan of the right width and depth, a favourite wooden spoon and a little patience.

      You can never hurry a good thing, and a risotto needs 20 minutes of being lovingly stirred to achieve that perfect level of unforgettable success. In each of the following recipes, I have explained how this happens, even though almost all risotti are cooked using the same basic technique. The now-common technique of toasting the rice grains – in order to seal them and thus keep them from overcooking – then gradually adding the liquid is relatively modern. In fact, risotto-making goes back a long way, and before the advent of the modern method, the rice was cooked in a possibly less complicated way by simply boiling it with other ingredients.

      I have added a few of those older recipes because I believe they are interesting but, even more importantly, because the finished dishes are truly delicious.

      EATING RISOTTO

      Risotto should always be eaten with a fork from a soup plate, or fondina. The risotto should be piled in a mound in the centre of the plate, then be eaten by pulling outwards towards the edge of the plate, using the back of the prongs of the fork, a little at a time, mouthful by mouthful, moving clockwise. Flattening the risotto on to the plate’s surface with the back of the fork is permitted, as this not only helps you get it safely on to your fork and up into your mouth, but also aids the cooling process. Next, you should move your fork around the edge of the plate, gradually moving towards the middle and always moving clockwise. When there is nothing but a small mound of risotto left in the middle of the plate, you are allowed to cross the plate from side to side, using a small piece of bread to help you chase the last few delectable grains.

      In Italy, risotto is almost always, and certainly by tradition, served as a first course. In a very few cases, it is served as a traditional accompaniment to a main course dish. For example, Risotto alla Milanese is often served with Ossobuco. In today’s climate of much smaller appetites, especially outside the boundaries of Italy, risotto will sometimes represent the main course, or even the entire meal, served with salad and fruit to follow.

      A Lombard manuscript from the late fourteenth century shows the rice harvest.

      The History of Risotto

      My journey of discovery to uncover the roots of this most wonderful dish has taken me quite literally from east to west. Rice is one of those foodstuffs that, over time, has set a tone and shaped the civilisation of entire areas of our planet. In simple terms, the world can be divided into quarters and a basic grain assigned to each one: maize for the Americas, millet for Africa, wheat for the Mediterranean and rice for Asia.

      Some historians tell us that the first archaeological evidence of rice, both wild and as a cultivated plant, goes back as far as the first millennium BC. From remote origins in China and other parts of the Orient, it appears that rice made its way to southern India, and from there to Asia Minor, carried there by nomads and traders.

      It was not until much later that rice became linked with areas outside Southeast Asia, after Alexander and his Greco-Macedonian troops invaded India in the fourth century BC.

      A satirical tale written by the Roman poet Horace, concerning a miser who complains bitterly to his doctor about the price of a rice tisane, tells us that in his time rice must have had some kind of medicinal use.

      As a crop, however, it did not have a wide impact either in Greece or the Mediterranean until the Arabs, with their great inventiveness and ability to put their ancient wisdom to all manner of things including the kitchen, brought rice into the picture during the Middle Ages. Having introduced rice-growing to Egypt and along the African coast, they then began to plant it in both Sicily and Spain.

      The cultivation of rice in Japan, nineteenth century.

      Rice-growing remained exclusive to these areas of the Mediterranean for some time, until eventually it was introduced into Lombardy and the rest of northern Italy, where it found a perfect climate to flourish. Gradually it became part of the familiar daily diet and lost its reputation as a remedy or medicine, although its usage as a curative must have continued to some degree because records of the Dukes of Savoy, dated 1250, show that rice was bought for the hospital of Sant’Andrea in Vercelli – a major rice-growing area – to make a special medicinal concoction.

      Elsewhere, rice – along with other foodstuffs, such as spices and sugar from far-flung places – was still considered to be an exotic ingredient. It was purchased from the specialist shops of Genoese, Venetian and Arab merchants, who acquired it from as far away as their ships could sail, and sold it at ridiculously high prices. To give you some idea of its value during the course of its history, the Milanese tribunal of 1336 set a price of 12 Imperials per pound for rice, compared with 8 Imperials per pound for honey.

      Outside Spain and Sicily, the northern Italians and other Europeans were now beginning to use rice as a ground grain, making it into rice flour with which to create recipes. The most famous of these is the ubiquitous Bianco Mangiare, which transmogrified into the pretty hideous Blanc Mange. As the name suggests, this was a dish made entirely from white ingredients: rice flour, goat or almond milk and white fish fillets or white poultry, all turned into a thick, creamy dish with a texture like a pudding, which could be either sweet or savoury. Variations on this recipe appear in many cookery books from various parts of Europe dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and rice flour is always an ingredient.

      In the fifteenth century, rice began to take hold in other regions of Italy, in the areas that are now Tuscany, Piedmont and Lombardy, and in various other parts of northern Europe.

      Lombardy was at the forefront of the development of rice cultivation, in the flat, damp, fog-bound countryside that makes up great tracts of that region. Starting in the Milanese and Veronese provinces in 1390, rice cultivation spread to the Saluzzese provinces in 1465, then into Tuscany in the Pisa province in 1468. Further plantations were created in Milan in 1475 and in Vercelli in 1493.

      It remains unclear to me whether rice originally made its way into Italy from the north or from Sicily and Spain. One link that might shed some light on the northern connection is the similarity between early Italian rice dishes and early Flemish recipes dating back to a time when Lombardy and Flanders were both under the rule of King Charles V of Spain.

      In particular, what looks very much like a forerunner of Risotto alla Milanese appears in a famous painting of a peasant wedding by Peter Brueghel. If indeed it is an early saffron risotto on those plates, this particular risotto is one of the oldest and most traditional. It crops up in many Lombard legends as a symbol of celebration, owing largely, I think, to its golden colour, and it is linked to marriage in many stories.

      The cultivation of rice at Manila in the Philippines, about 1857.

      The other theory is that rice began to arrive in Spain and Portugal from 1498 to 1505 as a result of Spanish and Portuguese merchants travelling to Calcutta and Goa. Perhaps it was presented at and adopted by the Spanish court of Naples and made its way

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