Review by Gillian Riley, to be published in Petits Propos Culinaires #101
Florine Boucher: Tutto Risotto, alles wat je wilt weten, over dat bijzondere Italiaanse rijstgerecht
Philippe Boucher, 2013: 320 pp.
paperback, many black and white illustrations and photographs
29.50 Euros.
Ever since I watched Anna del Conte, at a Guild of Food Writers workshop, demonstrate, with elegant expertise, how to cook risotto, I have had a deep respect for the concept and procedures of this north Italian dish. It is unique in the repertoire of rice cookery. Each stage does things to the rice that contribute to a creamy but chewable ensemble.
In Tutto Risotto Florine Boucher enhances our understanding of this methodology, and tells of the background, geographical and historical, of the rice culture of northern Italy, especially the Vercellese, where she has lived, and cooked, for many years. This region, up in the top left hand corner of Italy, between Piedmont and Lombardy, has cultivated rice for centuries. The landscape has been shaped by this, with the abundant tributaries of the Po channelled and controlled to provide essential irrigation of the network of fields, flooded in spring and dry and rustling with the golden grains in autumn, making the most of the horrible damp cold winters and the punishingly hot summers to create an environment just right for the development of the selected strains of rice that are used to cook risottos.
A risotto depends on the variety of rice, the nature of the cooking liquid, (we are given 15 different broths) and the size and shape of the pan you use. The rice varieties listed by Boucher are Arborio, Baldo, Carnaroli, Roma, Sant’Andrea and Vialone Nano. The kinds of risotto you could make with these can be all’onda, all’onda pigra, or asciutto: almost soupy (making waves), just slightly sloppy, and dry. She describes the way different varieties, handled in different ways, can give us a whole range of risottos, with different textures and consistencies, with this in common: the rice has to be al dente, to have some bite to it, whether floating in a creamy mass, or sitting high and dry on its plate. What you aim at and how you get there is a matter of both dogma and personal taste, depending on regional usage and local variations. Never mind about being innovative, in a brave youthful urge for self expression, let’s get our heads round the old ways first, is Florine’s approach, like that of Maureen B. Fant and Oretta Zanini de Vita in their book on pasta, reviewed here recently.
Boucher gives us the basic risotto method, and then six variations on it.
First of all the preparation of the trito, softening a mixture of finely chopped onion, garlic, leeks, whatever, in oil or an appropriate fat. This aromatises the oil. Some then remove the softened trito (for specific risottos) and cook the rice in the oil. This is the tostatura, which gives the grains of rice firmness and flavour, without browning them. Wine is then tipped in and allowed to evaporate, then the cooking liquid, chicken, meat, fish or vegetable broth, brought to simmering point, is stirred in bit by bit, adding more as it gets absorbed by the rice. Both the tostatura and the subsequent stirring need to be done with vigour, bashing the starch out of the grains of rice to form a sort of creamy blanket, accentuated by the mantecatura just before the end of cooking, where butter and grated parmesan are stirred in and the lot is left to settle a while before serving.
Imagine this paragraph expanded to several pages with a manic perfectionist enthusiasm and you get some idea of Boucher’s mission. Then we have her six variations on this basic procedure followed by 80 recipes, all with an enthusiastic introduction and meticulous instructions. There are classic recipes from all the rice-producing areas, and unusual, but authentic, local variations.
One of these, the hefty panissa vercellese is a hearty rib-sticking load of comfort food, including local beans from Saluggia, (similar to borlotti) and a soft regional sausage, salam d’la duja, salame sotto grasso (a well-seasoned salame, matured in a layer of lard, not to be confused with the ‘nduja of Calabria), and Barbera, a hefty red wine from Piedmont. The rice here is giving body to the store-cupboard stuff and cured meats of the winter months, as different as you can get from the golden glow of risotto Milanese (with or without the bone marrow) or the austere risotto bianco where the rice is allowed to speak for itself as the dominant voice in the ensemble. These two approaches show the polarities of the risotto: on one hand the rice is used as a vehicle for tasty and dominant, pungent ingredients, on the other it is to be savoured in its own right, its texture and delicate flavour accentuated by using a mild cooking liquid and delicately flavoured additions.
Recipes using vegetables include one for the tips of young nettles, or one with wild asparagus with its characteristic bitterness, another for a combination of red Treviso radicchio and slivers of pork fillet, or fennel and anchovies, or white asparagus and cinnamon, or tiny raw broad beans with melting lumps of robiola cheese, delicately seasoned with basil.
Risi e bisi gets a look in, though strictly speaking more of a minestra than a risotto, where tiny fresh young peas are cooked in broth made from their flavoursome pods, and served nice and runny, to eat with a spoon. Riso alla pilota is not really a risotto either, but rice cooked by evaporation, finished in a sealed pot after a rapid boil, the resulting separate grains seasoned before serving with a pesto di maiale, a crumbled not too fatty mass of pounded and lightly seasoned pork, fried in butter. Ample sustenance for the doughty labourers who pounded and winnowed the rice grains in a pilota, but did not have the time to prepare a traditional risotto.
A dish from Verona, where salt cod or stockfish are cooked to a milky whiteness (like a brandade de morue ), we find crisp spears of young asparagus in a saffron-coloured risotto with a last-minute swirl of this crema di baccalà.
Garlic, rosemary and pancetta go into a rustic risotto; while mela golden melinda, a superior kind of Golden Delicious grown in the Val de Non, and a local cheese, toma della Valsesia, with a few sliced walnuts, make a characteristically local use of what is to hand, kook met wat voorhanden is; another local combination is sausage and chestnuts, with a seasoning of nutmeg; a Sardinian touch comes with using a combination of tiny artichokes, garlic and bottarga; the red radicchio of Treviso goes with scamorza, a smoked pulled cheese from the south of Italy; leeks and funghi porcini make a fine vegetarian risotto.
The book is illustrated with black and white line subjects and many (some rather muddy) monochrome photographs of the landscape and implements of traditional rice production. These are a unique visual record of north Italian rice culture, and whatever their short-comings a huge improvement on the superfluous colour photographs that hike up the cost of so many food publications. This book is a treasure trove of little known recipes and a lovingly researched account of a classic Italian dish and how to cook it. An English translation would be warmly welcomed.