Video: Sunday lunch - The risotto
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
I discovered how risotto was made just before I got my driving license. Here in the country there was soup with rice, usually vegetables, more rarely pieces of meat. My mother - who will still look at me wrong today from the green prairies - used a criminology treaty technique: hot broth, two spoonfuls of ragù of the one made for the week and kept in the parlor in the fridge, and boiling rice inside. It took the age of majority to realize that rice did not grow inside the green bags of Riseria Rolo, and that Superfino Arborio was not an avenger in tights fighting against peronospera.
Today risotto is the subject of discussions between dapper stockbrokers and energetic financial planners, between chartered accountants on break and mothballed notaries standing in front of coffee. Few universally recognized points, many divergences that local cultures have brought to the proceedings. The agronomic experiments that brought rice to Maremma and Sardinia are also very interesting, with willing and often captivating results. Here is the busillis.
- Soffritto: it seemed written in the tables of the law, but today someone is trying to dry the risotto start-up, obliterating the classic finely chopped onion.
- Roasting: another cornerstone that only the quirkiness of modern gurmè is doubting, thanks also to aged rices (Acquerello, De Tacchi).
- Nuance: the use of white wine to mitigate toasting is already discussed. Those who say that rice must never stop cooking, those who argue that the acid and sugar make the taste of starches more rounded
- Liquid: for all the broth, beef or chicken. The Marquesan school opts for salt water only, to exalt the ingredients to the spasm
- Nut: goes retro
- Cooking: there are always the two old schools never outdated, all immediately without stirring except delicately, or continuous refilling of small quantities of boiling liquid to pull well.
- Tooth: tooth goes al dente, but there are those who literally love it crunchy. Often a shortcut to avoid the risk of cooking on the razor's edge, more risky.
- Creaming: the most varied butter and cheeses, out of the heat, but here too a new lever creeps in that wants it net of the creaming, tel that.
- Acrobatics: in the play of temperatures here are the bewitching experiments with raw oysters, or with ice creams: try that of red turnips or gorgonzola, to dream on the waves of Bottura's or Bartolini's creativity.
- Varieties: Vialone Nano and Carnaroli are timeless. Someone also supports the rarer S. Andrea which, however, is too rich in starches.
Risotto is a particularly sweet preparation due to the breadth of horizons it offers the cook, and the relative ease with which fairly satisfactory results are obtained. Another thing is the hyperurania excellence of Risotto della Vita, such as the one with the fuagrà and artichoke leaves by Davide Scabin from Combal Zero and the one with the pumpkin and Picolit beads by Massimo Bottura at the Osteria Francescana.
Image: asparagus and garganega risotto, occhipiuverdi / flickr
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