Risotto
Now just how obsessed can you get about a simple dish made from rice? Well, when you find yourself raving and gibbering about how sublimely sexy a risotto can be, you are officially pretty far gone. Making a risotto is an art that is best learned by just doing it, but just don’t do it with the wrong kind of rice. For recipes, talk to Gennaro Contaldo, Nadine Abensur or Jamie Oliver. For some courage to try, read on.
Start with an onion, perhaps a fennel bulb and a few sticks of celery and fry them very slowly in olive oil for around 10-15 minutes. They must just sweat. Elegantly. If you get this far, you have something called a soffritto. Add some arborio or carnaroli rice, stir to coat it in oil and fry for a minute or two. Then add a glass of white wine or vermouth (dry…). Stir until the liquid is absorbed. Refill your glass, and take a few sips. Now add a ladle of simmering stock and wait for the liquid to be absorbed. Taste for salt and check the texture of the rice. Add some flavour ingredients (mushrooms, perhaps). Add stock a ladle at a time until the rice is stiff firm but softly yielding (I am not going to say al-dente). Stir in a large pat of butter and a generous handful of grated parmesan cheese. Wait two to three minutes and serve your first risotto. If you hit the nail on the head, your fellow diners will groan with pleasure. Serve with a crispy dry white wine (Pouilly-Fumé will hit the spot). Just be warned that it is quite rich.
Pretty easy. Now how do you know this is authentic? You don’t. There are 1000 different variations on the theme but they all have one thing in common. The liquid is added one ladle at a time, so there is no guesswork with the amount of liquid needed. Whatever you do, don’t make it for an Italian. He/she will definitely disapprove because Mama did not do it this way. Fact is, Mama made it one of the other 999 ways. I did make it once for a bunch of people, one of whom was a crusty Italian septuagenarian who was so opinionated on the subject of risotto that his wife took years to pluck up the courage to make it for him. When she finally did, it was in great secrecy. Apparently, he found out as soon as the rice was poured into the soffritto. He could hear the this from the living room! When I made it for him, he hurled abuse at my technique, my soffritto, the crappy choice of rice (it was not carnaroli), the quantities, the parmesan and my technique for the entire time it took to prepare and eat the dish. Needless to say, the risotto was not my best….
Back to cooking the stuff. It would appear as if there is very little that humans consider to be food that you can not put into a risotto, once the basics are sorted. So lets look at the basics.
The soffritto is easy, just make absolutely sure that nothing browns as this will mess up both flavour and the colour. You can add garlic to the soffritto also, but you really have to watch it so that it does not brown. Burned or even browned garlic will ruin the dish. Put it in a big pot with a thick base on the lowest heat and you should be OK. Be extra careful on stoves you don’t know. It is done when the mixture is fragrant and the ingredients are soft and translucent. If you do not cook it enough, the onions will dominate the dish and may mess up the texture. In the final risotto, you cannot really identify onions or celery if you get it right.
Now the rice. Don’t even think about using anything other than a recognised risotto rice such as arborio, carnaroli or vialone nano. I have never seen vialone nano, but arborio and carnaroli are short, fat grains that are asymmetrical. Carnaroli is considered to be the queen of risotto rice as it holds its texture over a greater range of cooking times and liquid amounts, and is snow white when cooked. I go to quite some effort to get carnaroli as it is really the business. The stuff you get at supermarkets is most likely arborio. Don’t go all low budget on the rice and then toss in expensive parmisan. The rice is poured into the soffritto and stirred and gently fried to coat it in oil.
It is not strictly necessary to add the wine or vermouth, but I find that vermouth particularly adds a fabulous richness to the dish and is well worth the effort. Pour it in and take a good sniff of the alcohol steam. Straight to the head!
Stock is a subject on its own. I don’t eat anything with a face, so I can only really talk about vegetable stock, and I still defer to the experts here. Make it, it is worth the effort as bought veggie stock is usually horrible. Basically, make a weak vegetable soup. Toss in a dried chilli, fennel bulb, celery, chopped carrots, some porcini mushrooms etc. and simmer for an hour or two. Sieve and return to the pot. You will need 2-3l of the stuff simmering on a back burner. Freeze the leftover stock. Meat, chicken and fish stocks are all OK, just choose appropriately for the type of risotto you make.
The rest is easy. One ladle, into rice. Simmer until it is absorbed, taste, adjust salt and repeat. Now the final stage is pretty spectacular. Taste the dish, then add the butter and parmesan and taste it again. It goes from tasty but bland to a fat decadent mouthful in 2 minutes.
Don’t go and comprehensively screw things up by using margarine instead of butter. You will make bad karma. Also, get decent parmesan cheese. The good stuff can be hard to find, and is called Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can usually just tell from the price. Risotto needs to be served within minutes of adding the butter and cheese, so make sure that you are all set to eat. Don’t even think about doing it ahead of time.
Very few risotto’s are actually served as described above (this is a risotto bianco). Most everybody seems to think “mushroom” when you say risotto, and not without good reason, but there are infinite variations of things you can do. Mushrooms are pretty good, but there is a trick. Mushrooms must be fried in a pan that is hot enough to evaporate any liquid oozing from them before it accumulates in the pan. If you allow this liquid to accumulate, you end up just boiling them, and you won’t get the Maillard flavours you are looking for. Also, season the ’shrooms as they are added to the pan as this enhances the flavour considerably. Add half the mushrooms (finely chopped) after the 3rd ladle and the rest just before the butter and parmesan.
One of my own recipes is a butternut risotto. Roast the butternut (a medium sized butternut is enough for 500g of rice) in masses of olive oil and some salt at 180C for 45 minutes or so. The butternut should be very soft and sweet (caramelisation) , but not too browned. Tricky to get right. Mash it up and add it to the risotto after the 5th (give or take a bit) ladle of stock. Stir in some toasted pine nuts with the butter and parmesan and garnish with more toasted pine nuts. The finished dish is a golden yellow with no buttternut lumps, and an appealing crunchy mouth feel from the pine nuts. It also tastes pretty darned good.
There are some more exotic things you can do. A beetroot risotto is an outrageous red/pink colour (just right for the mother city queer project). Another option I have seen is a chocolate risotto. A good recipe book should provide inspiration.
Update:
I have now tried vialone nano rice, and it is pretty darned good. It is not as white as carnaroli, but it has a great flavour and texture. If you can find it, use it!