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Risotto
A good risotto can be made for feast or fast day, according to the contents of the larder and the wish of the cook. Rice, of course, is the foundation and, after picking over 1 cupful, turn it into a kettle containing 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, melted and hot. Stir occasionally until it begins to take on a golden tinge, then add 3 cupfuls of canned tomato which has been pressed through a sieve. Cover and cook slowly until the rice is tender and has absorbed all of the liquid, which will take about forty minutes.
When half done, add salt and pepper to taste.
If necessary to stir, use a fork in order not to break the grains. Just before taking up add I large tablespoonful of butter cut into bits and ½ of a cupful of grated cheese. If some rich broth is on hand, substitute it for the tomato, adding at the last 1/2 of a cupful of chopped meat in place of the cheese. Bits of cooked ham or a few tiny sausages may also be added if desired.
This is risotto in the older Italian household sense — a covered, absorption-cooked rice dish rather than the stirred, ladle-by-ladle version that became standard in restaurants. Read the instructions as written and resist the urge to stir it into creaminess.
- The hinge: do not stirThe whole method depends on the rice absorbing a fixed amount of liquid undisturbed, and the recipe says to use a fork only if stirring is unavoidable. Agitating it will break the grains and turn the dish to paste, which is the opposite of what this version wants.
- Rice to useWith a 1:3 rice-to-liquid ratio and a 40-minute covered cook, this reads as written for ordinary medium- or long-grain white rice rather than a short-grain risotto rice. If you substitute Arborio or Carnaroli, watch the grains closely and adjust the liquid to the texture you get.
- KettleA "kettle" here is a heavy lidded saucepan or Dutch oven, nothing to do with a tea kettle. A wide, thick-bottomed pan gives the most even absorption.
- Canned tomato pressed through a sieveThis is passata or strained tomato purée. Modern bottled tomato is likely to be thicker than what the recipe assumes, so thin it with water or stock to a pourable consistency if it looks like scorching before the rice is tender.
- Timing checkForty minutes is generous for white rice; start tasting at 20 to 25 minutes. If liquid remains when the grains are done, uncover and let it cook off over low heat rather than pushing the rice further.
- Cheese"Grated cheese" here most likely means a hard grating cheese, Parmesan or a domestic imitation, though the recipe does not specify. Stir it in with the butter at the very end so it melts gently rather than oiling out.
- SaltSeason at the halfway point as directed, but taste first — canned tomato and commercial broth both carry far more salt now than the home-made or lightly packed versions the writer had in mind.
- YieldOne cupful of raw rice gives roughly four side servings or two generous main dishes. The ham or sausage variation pushes it toward a one-dish supper.
The opening line — "for feast or fast day" — is the point of the recipe as much as the rice is. In Catholic practice, fast and abstinence days ruled out meat, and a dish built on rice, tomato and cheese satisfied them while the same pan finished with broth, chopped meat, ham or sausage served the rest of the week. Rice has been grown in the Po Valley of northern Italy since the late fifteenth century, and risotto belongs to that region rather than to the pasta-eating south. The economy of the dish is straightforward: a cup of rice, a can of tomato, three tablespoons of butter and a handful of cheese fed a family, and the closing suggestions show how the same base absorbed whatever scraps of cooked meat the larder held.