Risotto
Like all fundamentally simple foods, risotto has an air of mystery, perhaps because it is foreign and requires constant stirring. (It works for polenta, too!) Serious cookbooks treat risotto with respect bordering on reverence, filling pages with painstaking description of technique, subtle signs one mustn’t miss, minute mistakes one mustn’t make, and breathtaking paeans to the finished product. They are practically literature. Read them. You’ll absorb something, draw inspiration and fear of risotto gods from the rest, and figure out your own perfect risotto through practice.
This winter, sweet risottos made their way into our cooking repertory. I am not talking of chocolate risotto - although it is delicious – but of butternut squash, peas, fennel, snowpeas and apples, and risottos that are meant to be the main dish. They are very pretty – orange and green and the beautiful cream of rice – mild, comforting, and full of flavor.
I don’t use recipes for my risottos, guessing the amount of liquid I’d need per measure of rice (it’s more than seems right), and not sweating anything else. One of the key things with sweet risottos, we have learned, is to let them be sweet. Don’t use things that are distinctly savory – garlic and thyme – feel free to be generous with onions, and use sweet butter instead of olive oil, if your conscience permits. There should also be plenty of filling, and the fillings you’d use for sweet risottos would go in last – either already cooked (squash, fennel), or raw and chopped however fine you like. You can toss in some parmesan in the end or leave cheeseless and simply add salt and freshly ground black pepper. Butter and black pepper is one of the best taste combinations on earth.
And yes, you do have to stir it constantly.