A few years ago, in Milan, in an Osteria in the Navigli area run with love by people who want to protect the Italian tradition and more precisely that Meneghina, I had the pleasure of living a fantastic culinary experience: The risotto creamy creamy in the form of Parmesan.
Certainly one of the best risotto I have eaten, a unique experience that I had the good fortune to resume and I want to share with you.
Wanting to know something about this fantastic grain of rice, let’s start by saying that rice is a cereal of Asian origin whose origins are unknown. But one thing is certain, risotto is a typical Italian first course, and almost certainly originating in Veneto.
I am sorry for all my Milanese friends who have always been convinced that they were the birthplace of risotto, but as a good Venetian I want to believe that, among the most accredited versions, it was precisely the Venetians with their merchants in the East to import it first.
Analyzing other versions accredited on who introduced it in Italy, one could be that it was introduced in Sicily by the Arabs, or by the Spanish (Aragonesi) that they would have played an important role just during their domain in Naples.
Whatever the truth about who has the merit of having introduced risotto in Italy, to give to “Caesar what is Caesar’s” Lombardy certainly has the merit of having made it spread throughout Italy.
Starch is its main feature because, through the cooking process, it binds the flasks together forming a creamy compound.
The most suitable rice varieties are Carnaroli, Arborio, Baldo and Vialone nano.
One of the techniques to cook it, probably for those people with little time or who do not like to stay in the kitchen too much, is to put the hot broth (or water) in one solution. Personally I speak the one I learned watching my parents and even before my grandparents while constantly turning the rice to not let it stick to the pot, adding little by little the broth.
You should know that until 1400 it was considered a medicine to the point that the plant was sold in spice shops. The Egyptians left it in infusion and drank it as if it were a medicinal broth.
At the beginning rice was cooked in soup and only in the mid-1800s Lombardy spread the risotto throughout northern Italy. There were two variants: the risotto alla Certosina, which was the variant povera, that is it was cooked with what you had at home, and the variant aristocratica: the risotto alla milanese, that everyone knows, with very expensive saffron that reproduced the color of gold.
Whatever the origin of the rice and who introduced it in Italy, it does not matter, risotto today is prepared in many ways that certainly makes it one of the most loved dishes by Italians.
How do you cook it?
Cover Image: trattoriaangiolino