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Rice with Peas
1/2 cup of rice Grated Parmesan cheese 2 tablespoons of butter 1 small onion Chop the onion up fine and put it into the saucepan with one-half the butter (one tablespoon). Cook until the onion is brown, then pour on the rice (raw) and fry until the rice is dry. Then add hot water, a ladleful at a time, taking care not to let the rice boil too hard, as it will then become hard in the middle and floury around the edges. When the rice is cooked, put the saucepan at the back of the stove, and add the rest of the butter. Before taking off the stove add a little grated Parmesan cheese and the peas, which have been prepared as follows:
Take a small piece of ham fat, one-half small onion, and some parsley. Chop together fine, add three tablespoons of olive-oil, salt and pepper, and put into a saucepan on the fire. When the onion is colored add one can of green peas (or fresh peas, according to season). When the peas have absorbed all the olive-oil add a sufficient quantity of broth to cover them (or water) and cook until peas are soft. Then mix the peas with the rice, add one tablespoon of Parmesan cheese, and serve.
Rice "alla Romana" (Risotto alla Romana) A small piece of ham fat 1 stalk of celery Parsley 1 onion 2 mushrooms canned, or 1 fresh mushroom 1/3 pound of lean beef Chop these ingredients together and put them into a large saucepan with a small piece of butter. Cook until the meat is well browned. Then add one tablespoon of red or white wine. Cook for a few minutes, then add one tablespoon of tomato paste dissolved in a little hot water, or two and one-half tablespoons of the other tomato sauce. Cook well, adding from time to time a little water--one-half cup in all. Wash the rice (a little less than a cupful), add it to the other ingredients in the saucepan, and cook for about twenty minutes, until the rice is soft, adding more water from time to time. Then add two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese, mix well, and serve, with more cheese if desired.
Risotto "alla Nostrale" Take a small piece of onion, slice into small bits, and put into a saucepan with two tablespoons of butter. Cook until onion is browned. Wash well one-half cup of rice. Put it into the saucepan with the onion, add salt and pepper, and fry until the rice is dry. Then take one and one-half tablespoons of tomato paste, thinned with hot water (or two tablespoons of other tomato sauce), and add to the rice. Little by little add hot water until the rice is cooked through (about one cup of hot water). Then add grated cheese, Parmesan or Gruyere, one and one-half tablespoons of butter, and mix well over the fire, then serve.
This rice can be served alone or with fried sausages, or with cold chicken, or any left-over meat prepared in the following manner: Take one and one-half tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Cut the cold meat into slices, and add them to the butter. Fry well, then take one and one-half tablespoons of tomato paste, thinned in water (or three tablespoons tomato sauce). Add to the meat a little at a time. Simmer for one-half hour, then put into the middle of hot platter, surrounded by rice, and pour this sauce over all. Add a handful of grated Parmesan cheese to the rice. This preparation of meat can be served with macaroni or corn-meal instead of the rice.
Three risotti in sequence, written for a coal range with hot spots. The method is recognisably modern except that the liquid is water rather than stock and the onion is taken further than most cooks would take it today.
- Rice to useUse a short-grain Italian rice — Arborio, Carnaroli or Vialone Nano — which releases the starch this method depends on. Long-grain rice will stay separate and never build the creaminess implied by the finishing butter and cheese. Note that the second and third recipes both tell you to wash the rice; skip that, since rinsing removes the surface starch.
- "Cook until the onion is brown"Take the onion to pale gold rather than a true brown. Older ranges made scorching easy to overshoot, and heavily browned onion can leave the finished dish bitter and muddy in colour.
- Heat levels"On the fire" means direct medium heat; "the back of the stove" is the cool zone of a wood or coal range, so read it as the lowest burner setting or the heat switched off. The warning against letting the rice "boil too hard" is the hinge of the whole thing — keep it at a bare, lazy simmer or you get the hard centre and floury edge described.
- LiquidHalf a cup of raw rice will take somewhere in the region of one to two cups of liquid, added a ladle at a time; the third recipe puts it at about one cup, and the second gives about twenty minutes' cooking. Water works but stock is better; the peas are already given broth as an option, so use the same for the rice.
- Ham fatThe "small piece of ham fat" is the fat trimmed from a raw cured ham — closest today is pancetta, guanciale or a scrap of prosciutto fat, about 1 oz, finely chopped. Diced streaky bacon is an acceptable substitute; sweet-cured American ham is not.
- Canned peasCanned peas are already fully cooked, so "cook until peas are soft" applies only to fresh or frozen. With canned, warm them through in the flavoured oil for two or three minutes; with frozen, four or five. Anything longer and they collapse to grey.
- "The other tomato sauce"This refers to a plain tomato sauce given elsewhere in the book. Substitute any simple cooked tomato sauce, or use tomato paste at the stated amount thinned with hot water — the paste is the more reliable reading, since concentrated paste and a loose sauce are given at different volumes for the same job.
- CheeseGrate Parmigiano-Reggiano yourself and add it off the heat. Pre-grated cheese contains anti-caking starch that goes gritty, and cheese boiled into the rice turns stringy rather than binding it.
- YieldHalf a cup of raw rice with the peas serves two as a first course, one as a main. The risotto alla Romana, at nearly a cup of rice with a third of a pound of beef, serves three or four.
Rice grown in the Po valley made northern Italy a rice-eating region while the south stayed with wheat pasta, and risotto is the technique that grew out of it: raw rice toasted in fat, then coaxed with liquid added little by little. Risi e bisi, rice with peas, is most associated with Venice, where it was traditionally tied to the spring pea harvest and to the feast of St Mark on 25 April; the version here, cooking the peas separately with ham fat, onion and parsley before folding them in, keeps the peas' colour in a way that cooking them alongside the rice does not. The book offers canned peas "or fresh peas, according to season", treating the two as equal options. The "alla Nostrale" of the third recipe means, roughly, "our way" or "homestyle" than one, and the note about using up cold chicken or leftover meat shows what these dishes were really for.