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Milanese Rissotto
Peel and mince fine a small onion, put it into a stewpan with three ounces of butter, and fry it until it commences to brown; then put in one breakfast cupful of well-washed rice. Fry it for seven or eight minutes, and pour in just enough stock to boil the rice in. Add a pinch of saffron, and let it boil slowly and gently until tender. When the rice is soft, mix with it one breakfast cupful of grated Parmesan cheese, and stir it over the fire until the cheese has melted. Cut three rounds of bread, toast it to a light brown, then trim off the crusts. Butter the toast and lay it on a hot dish. Season the rice-mixture to taste with salt and pepper, turn it onto the toast, and serve.
A short, workable risotto by modern standards, with one oddity: it is served heaped on buttered toast rather than in a bowl. A few conversions and one technique note will get you there.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a modern teacup, generally reckoned at 8-10 fl oz. Treat both measures here as a standard 8 oz cup: one cup of rice, one cup of grated Parmesan.
- Butter quantityThree ounces is six tablespoons for a single cup of rice, which is rich even by risotto standards. Four tablespoons is closer to current practice, with the rest stirred in at the end if you want the gloss.
- The riceNo variety is named, but a short-grain starchy rice — Arborio or Carnaroli — is what makes this work. Long-grain rice will not release the starch that binds the dish.
- Do not wash the riceThe instruction to use "well-washed rice" belongs to an era when rice arrived dusty and talc-coated. Rinsing strips the surface starch that gives risotto its texture; skip it with modern packaged rice.
- Stock, added gradually"Just enough stock to boil the rice in" is roughly three to four times the volume of the rice. Add it hot, a ladle at a time, stirring as each addition is absorbed, rather than all at once — the original's "boil slowly and gently" is doing the same work by other means. Figure 18-20 minutes.
- SaffronA pinch is imprecise; a modest pinch runs to roughly a dozen or two threads. Steep them in a few tablespoons of the hot stock for ten minutes and add the liquid along with the threads, which draws out more colour than dropping them in dry.
- Cheese off the heatThe recipe says to stir the Parmesan in over the fire. Pull the pan off the burner first: direct heat makes Parmesan separate into strings and grease. Residual heat is plenty to melt a cup of it.
- YieldThree rounds of toast means three servings as a first course, or two as a light main. The toast goes soft quickly, so assemble at the table.
Risotto alla milanese is the saffron rice of Lombardy, and its yellow colour is traditionally explained by a story about a workman gilding the windows of Milan's Duomo who tipped his saffron into the wedding rice — a tale generally treated as legend rather than record. Saffron rice dishes in northern Italy are attested earlier, and the pairing of rice, butter and grated cheese follows the Po valley's rice paddies and dairy country. Serving soft, savoury mixtures on trimmed rounds of toast was a plating convention of the period that made a spoonable dish into something a waiter could carry and a diner could cut.