Risotto alla milanese

Artusi gives this dish three times over, which tells you it was already contested in 1891. What the three versions share is the method: rice toasted in fat, liquid added gradually, the whole thing finished off the heat with butter and cheese.

The saffron is not decoration. It is the dish.

Ingredients

Serves 2 generously.

	Metric	Imperial
Carnaroli rice	180 g	6.5 oz
Beef or chicken stock, hot	750 ml	25 fl oz
Saffron threads	a good pinch	a good pinch
Onion, chopped very fine	40 g	1.5 oz
Butter, cold, cubed	60 g	2 oz
Beef marrow, chopped, if you have it	20 g	0.75 oz
Parmigiano reggiano, grated	50 g	1.75 oz
Dry white wine	60 ml	2 fl oz

Carnaroli holds its shape longer than arborio and is more forgiving. Steep the saffron in a ladle of the hot stock before you start, so it gives up its colour.

Method

1. Soften the onion, and the marrow if you have it, in a third of the butter, without letting it colour.
2. Add the dry rice and toast it for two minutes, stirring, until the grains turn translucent at the edges and smell faintly of biscuit.
3. Add the wine and let it evaporate.
4. Add hot stock a ladle at a time, stirring often, waiting until each addition is nearly absorbed before the next. This takes 16 to 18 minutes.
5. Add the saffron stock about halfway through, so the colour has time to spread evenly.
6. When the rice is done but still firm at the centre, take the pan off the heat. Beat in the remaining cold butter and the parmigiano vigorously.
7. Rest it a minute, then loosen with a last splash of stock until it spreads slowly when you tilt the plate.

What goes wrong

It stands up in a dome. Overcooked, or too little liquid at the end. Milanese risotto is served all onda, in a wave: it should settle across the plate on its own.

The grains are mush with a hard core. The heat was too high and the outside cooked before the middle. A steady simmer, never a boil.

The colour is pale and patchy. Saffron added late and dry. Steeping it first is what makes the colour even.

Why it works

Beating cold butter into rice off the heat is an emulsion, the same principle as the Roman pasta sauces. The starch released by stirring, plus the fat, plus a little liquid, gives a sauce that coats every grain with no cream involved. Doing it off the heat is what stops the fat separating out again.

At the table

Milan's own dish, and the one Italian rice preparation most foreigners have heard of. It is a primo, eaten with a fork, spread out across the plate rather than heaped, and it is served the moment it is finished.

It is also the exception to a firm rule. Everywhere else in Italy a primo is a course of its own, but risotto alla milanese is the standard accompaniment to ossobuco alla milanese, and the two arrive together on one plate. That is not a restaurant taking liberties. It is the pairing the city is known for, and ordering the ossobuco without it would be the odd request.

The saffron is the point and it should taste of something. A risotto that is merely yellow has been coloured rather than flavoured, which is a shortcut with a long history in cheap kitchens.

Nothing goes on top. No parsley, no extra cheese, no drizzle of oil. The mantecatura at the end has already put in all the butter and parmigiano the dish is going to get.

What an Italian would say

In Milan, that the marrow belongs in it and that leaving it out is a modern softening. That it is a dish in its own right rather than a side, except when it arrives under ossobuco, when it is both. And that if it is stiff enough to hold a fork upright, it is polenta.