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Rice Soup (Minestra di Riso)
Meat stock 2 tablespoons of rice Cover the rice with water and boil for ten minutes; the drain and add to the stock (after it has been strained), and boil for five or ten minutes more.
A minestra in brodo of the plainest kind, written for cooks who already had a pot of stock on the stove. Almost everything depends on the stock, since there is nothing else in the bowl.
- The hinge: parboil and drainThe ten minutes in plain water, then draining, is not a shortcut but the whole point. It washes off surface starch so the broth stays clear rather than turning cloudy and gluey.
- ProportionsThe recipe gives no stock quantity. Two tablespoons of raw rice is roughly a single serving; reckon about a cup (240 ml) of broth per person and scale from there. Serves one to two as written.
- Which riceThe recipe names no variety. An Italian short-grain rice of the arborio or vialone nano type suits this kind of soup; long-grain works but gives a thinner, less satisfying result, and parboiled or instant rice will not absorb broth properly.
- Second cooking timeFive to ten minutes in the stock finishes rice that is already half-cooked. Test a grain rather than trusting the clock: it should be tender with a slight firmness at the centre, since it keeps softening in the hot bowl.
- Strain the stockThe instruction to strain matters more than it sounds. A homemade brodo cooled and lifted of its fat, then passed through a fine sieve or cloth, is what separates this from watery rice.
- SeasoningNo salt is mentioned, presumably because the stock was expected to carry it. Taste the strained broth before the rice goes in and correct then, as the rice will absorb a good deal of it.
- ServingGrated parmesan at the table is a usual accompaniment to a broth-and-rice minestra, and nutmeg is sometimes added. Serve at once; rice left standing in broth swells and thickens the soup into porridge.
Minestra di riso belongs to the everyday repertoire of the northern Italian kitchen, where rice rather than pasta was often the starch in a bowl of broth. Rice has been grown in the Po valley since the late fifteenth century, and short-grain rice cooked in whatever stock the household had going was a common first course from Piedmont through Lombardy and the Veneto. The recipe's brevity is a signal in itself: books of this kind assumed a pot of brodo made from boiling meat was available, so the writer needed only to explain what to do with two spoonfuls of rice.