Risotto alla milanese

Duration: 35 min

Difficulty:  Medium

Region: Lombardia

Risotto alla Milanese is perhaps the best known and most appreciated typical dish of Milan in all of Italy. Recipe based on rice and saffron, it is offered as a first course or as an accompaniment to other very famous dishes of the Milanese tradition, especially meat, Ossobuco. This seemingly simple dish to prepare actually expresses the skills of those who cook it to the fullest. It is generally served freshly made, all’onda. If, on the other hand, there is leftover, nothing is discarded and another famous Milanese dish is salted rice, made crunchy in a pan-sautéed pie. As for the origins of this dish, they are not clear, it is thought to be a dish born from the medieval kosher tradition, in which saffron and rice were basic ingredients, customs brought by Jewish emigrants from Sicily. Then adapted and modified up to the present day to become a risotto.

Historical curiosities: Giovanni Pascoli and the Risotto alla Milanese

The poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) loved good food and above all Milanese risotto, so he asked the wife of the journalist Augusto Guido Bianchi to leave the recipe, and out of gratitude he wrote it down in rhyme:

• Occorre di carbone un vivo fuoco,
• la casseruola, cento grammi guoni
• di burro e di cipolla quanche poco.
• Quando il burro rosseggia, allora vi poni
• il riso crudo, quanto ne vorrai
• e mentre tosta l’agiti e scomponi.
• Del brodo occorre poi, ma caldo assai,
• mettine un po’ per volta che bollire
• deve continuo, nè asciugarsi mai.
• Nel tutto sulla fine, diluire
• di zafferano un poco tu farai
• perchè in giallo lo abbia a colorire.
• Il brodo tu graduare ben saprai,
• perchè denso sia il riso, allorché è cotto
• di grattugiato ce ne vuole assai.
• Così avrai di Milan pronto il risotto.

Ingredients

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 350 g of Carnaroli rice
• 40 g of onion
• 80 g of ox marrow
• ½ glass of dry white wine
• 1 liter of meat broth
• 1 packet of saffron
• Grated Grana Padano to taste
• Butter to taste
• salt

How to Proceed

Take a saucepan suitable for preparing risotto, add a knob of butter and the ox marrow. Chop the onion and add it.

Let everything fry until the onion is softened, then add the rice and let it toast with the sautéed ingredients, mixing well. Roasting takes one or two minutes to cook. Finally, to dilute, add half a glass of white wine. Add the salt.

Gradually adding the hot meat broth with a ladle, cook the rice for about twenty minutes. Halfway through cooking, add the saffron to the rice, stirring constantly until the risotto acquires that beautiful bright yellow colour.

Almost at the end of cooking, stir the rice by adding a knob of butter and 4 tablespoons of grated Grana Padano. Mix well. Turn off the heat and let the risotto rest for a couple of minutes.

In any case, serve it piping hot and wavy (i.e. the risotto shouldn’t be too liquid or too compact). As you move the saucepan, the rice should form a wave.