Risotto alla Milanese

The risotto method with saffron and marrow, cooked to serve beside ossobuco.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, parmesan whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 320 g carnaroli rice
• 1.2 litres beef broth, kept at a simmer
• 60 g beef marrow, scooped from the bones
• 1 small onion, very finely chopped
• 0.3 g saffron threads
• 120 ml dry white wine
• 70 g cold butter, diced
• 70 g parmesan, grated
• 1.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Make it as the risotto method: toast the rice, wine, hot broth a ladle at a time, 18 minutes, mantecatura off the heat. What follows is only what is different.
2. MELT BEEF MARROW IN THE PAN BEFORE THE ONION, instead of oil or butter. It is the first of the two things that make this Milanese, and it gives a savoury weight nothing else does.
3. Cook the onion in the marrow very gently, with no colour at all.
4. STEEP THE SAFFRON IN A LADLE OF HOT BROTH FOR 20 MINUTES and add it in the LAST FIVE MINUTES of cooking. Threads thrown in at the start give the colour and lose most of the scent over eighteen minutes of stirring.
5. Use threads, not powder: powder tints the rice evenly and tastes of almost nothing.
6. Finish with the cold butter and parmesan off the heat, all'onda, loose enough to move in a wave.
7. It is cooked to sit beside ossobuco on the same plate, which is why it is seasoned lightly — the braise brings its own salt and its juices run into the rice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes