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Rissotto
Peel and mince fine one small onion; put one ounce of butter into a stewpan with one-half tablespoonful of flour, and stir it over the fire; when well mixed, put in the onion, and fry it until lightly browned. Wash one-fourth pound of rice, drain it, add it to the onion, pour in enough clear stock to cook it in, and boil until the grains have swollen but not mashed to a pulp. Shake the stewpan occasionally, but do not stir the rice with a spoon. When it is cooked, season it to taste with pepper and salt, and strain in a small quantity of lemon juice. Turn the rissotto onto a hot dish, strew some grated Parmesan cheese over it, and serve without delay.
Oscar's risotto is an older, plainer style than the creamy stirred version now standard: the rice is cooked almost like a pilaf in a butter-and-flour base, and the cook is told expressly to leave it alone.
- The hinge: do not stirThe instruction to shake the pan rather than stir with a spoon is deliberate. Stirring at this ratio, with flour already in the pan, turns the dish pasty; the shaking keeps the grains loose and separate. If you want a modern creamy risotto, this is not that recipe.
- Quantities and yieldOne-fourth pound of rice is about 115 g, a generous half cup dry, and one ounce of butter is two tablespoons. This makes two modest side servings or one main course.
- How much stock"Enough clear stock to cook it in" is unquantified; for this amount of rice something in the region of 2 cups is a reasonable starting point, added at the start rather than in ladlefuls, as the wording implies. Add it hot, keep the heat low, and allow around twenty minutes.
- The rice to buyUse a short or medium grain Italian rice such as Arborio or Carnaroli, or Spanish Bomba. Long-grain rice will cook through without the swollen, slightly toothy texture the recipe is aiming at.
- StewpanA heavy-bottomed saucepan, wide enough that the rice sits in a shallow layer. Thin pans scorch the flour before the onion has coloured.
- "Strain in a small quantity of lemon juice"Strain simply means through a sieve to catch pips and pulp. A teaspoon or two is the intent; more will fight the Parmesan.
- Cheese and timingGrate the Parmesan finely and have it ready before the rice is done. "Serve without delay" is practical advice, as risotto of this kind stiffens quickly off the heat.
Risotto reached grand-hotel menus in the late nineteenth century by way of northern Italy, where the rice fields of the Po valley made rice a staple rather than a luxury, and the name's spelling was unsettled in English: Oscar Tschirky's "rissotto" with its double s is one of many variants printed in period cookbooks. The flour stirred into the butter at the start, a small roux to bind the dish, is often said to reflect French rather than Italian kitchen practice, though the point is an inference rather than an established fact. The instruction against stirring is worth noting because it is the opposite of what most cooks now expect: the modern insistence on constant agitation to draw starch out of the grain became the dominant technique later.