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Rasotto
Brown a layer of white onions in butter in a frying pan. Then put a layer of cold boiled rice and a layer of stewed tomatoes. Let heat through.
— Mrs. Letitia Castle
A three-line village receipt with no quantities, no seasoning and no timing — closer to a skillet rice supper than to anything an Italian cook would call risotto. Treat it as a proportion sketch and fill in the rest.
- It is not risottoTrue risotto is raw short-grain rice toasted in fat and cooked by degrees with hot broth, stirred until the starch emulsifies. This is cold cooked rice warmed in a pan with onion and tomato, and no amount of stirring will make it creamy. Expect a loose pilaf texture and judge it on those terms.
- ProportionsFor four servings, use about 1 large onion sliced thin, 2 tablespoons butter, 3 cups cold cooked rice and a 14-15 oz can of tomatoes with their juice. The rice should be a day old and broken up with the fingers so it does not go into the pan in clumps.
- Stewed tomatoesAt the time this often meant tomatoes cooked down with a little butter, sugar and sometimes breadcrumbs, either put up at home or bought in a can. Canned stewed or diced tomatoes stand in directly; drain off some of the liquid if you want the rice to stay distinct.
- Brown the onions properly"Brown" here means genuinely coloured, not merely softened — that is the only real flavour in the dish. Give the sliced onions 15 to 20 minutes over medium-low heat, which is longer than the terse wording suggests.
- Let heat throughCover and cook over low heat 8 to 10 minutes, until the rice has taken up the tomato liquid and is steaming all the way down. Layering as written works, but a gentle fold halfway through keeps the bottom layer from scorching.
- SeasoningThe receipt gives none. Salt and pepper are essential; a spoonful of grated cheese stirred in at the end, or a little basil, brings it closer to what the name promises.
The misspelling is the interesting part. Risotto arrives in community collections like this one phonetically mangled and structurally unrecognisable — the name attached to whatever the contributor understood the dish to be. What Mrs. Castle actually recorded belongs to a much larger American genre: the leftover-rice skillet dish, a thrift recipe of the same family as red rice, Spanish rice and the various tomato-and-rice bakes that fill church and village fundraising cookbooks of the era.