Italian

January 15, 2015 Italian

Saffron Risotto

Saffron risotto | Risotto alla Milanese: the favourite comfort food of my thirteen year old. She’s always loved risotto, and I can only put that down to the holidays we took when she was very tiny, when we would spend the summer months in Italy… One of her first ever risotto’s was a Barolo and gorgonzola affair, eaten al fresco in Lucca, the spectacular walled town to the north of Pisa. Just over a year old, the Italian’s adored her gusto as she wolfed down half of my supper, having already eaten a healthy portion of my carpaccio… To this day carpaccio and parmesan are a key part of her diet. I’ve never really considered before how much this has to do with early exposure, but in retrospect, some of these early ingredients are the very bedrock of her diet.

There’s quite a lot of detail to put into any post on risotto, so I’ve separated the parts out, with one lengthy post on the finer details of risotto here… And here is my saffron risotto:

Ingredients:
250g risotto rice, preferably Aquerello rice
1L of good chicken or vegetable stock
3 shallots, very finely diced
a large pinch of good saffron
1 large glass of white wine (I used a mixture of Noilly Prat and Marsala)
60g of cold, diced, unsalted butter (approx)
40g of hard cheese, such as Grana Padano or Parmesan

Method:

Sauté the shallots in the butter and olive oil until they soften – you’re not looking for the shallots to colour… And unlike some risotto bases, the soffrito for saffron risotto doesn’t include garlic. My shallots were chopped a little too large here – ideally you want them to be the same size as the rice.
In the meantime, gently heat your stock – do not boil it, or you may reduce the stock to fast, and make it too strong.
Take a ladleful of the stock and put it into a small bowl – add your saffron and allow it to infuse
Once the shallot has softened sufficiently, pour in the risotto rice, and stir it into the base – you’re actually looking to toast the rice (tostatura), and you can see each kernel will become more translucent. After a minute or so, pour in the alcohol of your choice… Ordinarily it’s a glass of white wine, but I’ve seen a variety of things used from Vermouth to Masala – personally I like the herby’ness of Noilly Prat, but on this occasion also used a little Madeira to push up the richness of the flavour base, and enhance the colour of the dish (apparently in Italy it’s not uncommon to add a tablespoon of passata, to increase the richness of the colour). Allow the alcohol to bubble until it has been absorbed into the rice. I do this until you can draw a line through the rice, with no liquid left in the pan.
If your saffron has “bloomed” sufficiently you can add it to your rice (I used to add it to the stock, but it seems to work better this way).
From this point on the process can be repeated with the stock – add a ladle at a time until it sits just above the rice, and keep stirring it until the stock has been absorbed.
Once the risotto has absorbed all the liquid, and is just al dente, take it off the heat and set it aside for a minute. This resting process allows the temperature to come down just enough, before you beat in the cheese and butter (the mantecatura).
Add sufficient cheese and cold diced butter to develop a creamy sauce – I can’t really tell you how much, as this bit is quite personal. I probably used about 60g of butter, and 40g of Parmesan.

I’ve shown the whole process in the following photographs….

Risotto base — Soften the shallots in a little olive oil

Add your alcohol and raise the temperature a little

Keep stirring until the alcohol is absorbed – you should be able to draw a line through the rice with your spoon.

Add a ladleful of stock

Keep stirring the rice, which allows the starches to be released. Make sure the stock is absorbed before adding the next ladelful.

Repeat the process, one ladleful at a time, until all the stock is used and the rice is al dente. If you run out of stock, you can add a little water.

Take your rice off the heat, and allow it to relax for a couple of minutes. Then beat in the cold butter and cheese, until a soft and relaxed risotto is achieved (clearly to your taste).

Serve the rice in a warmed bowl, with additional Grana Padano or Parmesan.

October 16, 2014 Cheese

Butter and Sage Gnudi

I’m such a lucky gal, I’m so lucky to have a Hubby who likes to cook as much as I do. Normally it’s curry (and he makes fabulous curry), but he was recently captivated by Jamie Oliver’s gnudi recipe. He likes the combination of multiple cheeses, and lemon particularly. So lucky me, he undertook the two day task as earnestly as I would have done. Don’t let the fact it’s a two day recipe put you off, you really need the drying out time to allow the gnudi to set-up.

Ingredients (for 3-4 portions):

500g best-quality ricotta
50 g Parmesan cheese
½ whole nutmeg, for grating
Zest of one lemon
fine semolina, for dusting

Method:

Put the ricotta into a bowl with a pinch of sea salt and black pepper, then finely grate in the Parmesan and a few scrapings of nutmeg, along with the lemon zest. Beat it together, then have a taste to check the balance of seasoning is right – you want the nutmeg to be very subtle.
Generously cover a large tray with semolina, then roll the ricotta mixture into 3cm balls, rolling them in the tray of semolina as you go until really well coated. You should get around 20 gnudi from this amount of mixture. Shake and cover really well with the semolina and leave for 8 hours or preferably overnight in the fridge (don’t cover the tray) – the semolina will dehydrate the ricotta, giving the gnudi a lovely fine coating.
The gnudi will only take 3 minutes to cook, cook them in 2-portion batches to take care of them. Shake the excess semolina off 2 portions-worth of gnudi and cook them in boiling salted water while you melt a large knob of butter in a frying pan on a medium heat and pick in about 10 sage leaves to crisp up. Remove the crispy leaves to a plate and scoop the gnudi directly from the water into the frying pan, adding a spoonful of the cooking water. When the butter and water have emulsified, take off the heat and grate over a layer of Parmesan, add just a few drops of lemon juice, then toss together. Serve in warm bowls straight away with an extra grating of nutmeg and Parmesan and the crispy sage leaves, while you get on with the next batch, wiping the frying pan clean between batches.

Notes:

Do not place the gnudi in boiling water – bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, carefully put the gnudi in, so that they don’t break up
The size of Jamie’s gnudie is a little too big, in our opinion, we think they should be about half the size.
Jamie doesn’t include the zest of a lemon in his recipe, though he did on the TV episode. Hubby included the zest, and we do think it’s necessary, to offset the richness of the ricotta
In his new book, My Perfect Pantry, Geoffrey Zakarian has a gnudi recipe with mushrooms – that looks amazing!
They are quite rich, but they’d make an amazing starter… We’re already trying to work out combinations… It would seem sensible to have a category of variations that were light and herby, others that were meaty and full of depth, like the mushroom, and others that might include spices and a little heat… Think of it as your new pasta..

October 11, 2014 Bruschetta

Heritage Tomato Bruschetta

Heritage tomatoes have so much more flavour than the industrial variety – sure they may be a funny shape, or sometimes a little ugly, but beauty occurs in the mouth too. I’ve been reading an amazing book about umami recently, which is why my timeline is flooded with things like tamarillos, but I wanted to use tomatoes too. Both have high levels of glutamate, which is a key component in umami – probably explaining why so many of us like them. By far the most popular tomato dish in our house is the simplest, but with perfectly good ingredients, simplicity really is key.

I’m not really going to give you any more than a cursory recipe – as that’s all it requires. Cut a ciabatta in half lengthways, and pop it into a hot oven (200ºC or so), and let it become golden. As you remove it from the oven, smear it with a whole clove of garlic, the roughness of the ciabatta will gate it over the surface. Concentrate particularly on the crusty edges. Chop your tomatoes by hand, not in a machine, and include some herbs.