Saffron risotto alla milanese
A creamy, pearly rice, gilded with saffron, bound with butter and cheese. The festive dish of Milan par excellence — opulent, fragrant, with a solar yellow that announces great occasions.
A creamy, pearly rice, gilded with saffron, bound with butter and cheese. The festive dish of Milan par excellence — opulent, fragrant, with a solar yellow that announces great occasions.
Allow me to introduce you to the risotto of my dear Milan. One begins by browning the rice in butter, then feeds it, ladle by ladle, with a good meat broth — never all at once, you understand, but with measure and constancy, as one leads a sentence to its proper cadence. The saffron, that precious filament, comes at the last moment to give it that gold which delights the eye before the palate. At my table on Via Morone, it was the dish of happy days, and I never saw a guest remain indifferent to it.
- •Rice from the Lombard plain — one measure per person (base)
- •Beef marrow — a knob (base fat)
- •Butter — to taste (binding)
- •Meat broth — enough (cooking)
- •Saffron (stigmas) — a pinch (signature)
- •Grated cheese (grana) — a good handful (final binding)
- •Onion — one small (aromatic)
Saffron risotto alla milanese
A creamy, pearly rice, gilded with saffron, bound with butter and cheese. The festive dish of Milan par excellence — opulent, fragrant, with a solar yellow that announces great occasions.
Why this dish? Manzoni spent most of his life in Milan, in his palace on Via Morone, in the heart of the city of which this risotto is the emblem. The rice came from the nearby Lombard paddies; the saffron and marrow made it a reception dish, worthy of the dinners where the writer hosted the intellectual elite of the Risorgimento.
Allow me to introduce you to the risotto of my dear Milan. One begins by browning the rice in butter, then feeds it, ladle by ladle, with a good meat broth — never all at once, you understand, but with measure and constancy, as one leads a sentence to its proper cadence. The saffron, that precious filament, comes at the last moment to give it that gold which delights the eye before the palate. At my table on Via Morone, it was the dish of happy days, and I never saw a guest remain indifferent to it.
Ingredients (period version)
- Rice from the Lombard plain — one measure per person (base)
- Beef marrow — a knob (base fat)
- Butter — to taste (binding)
- Meat broth — enough (cooking)
- Saffron (stigmas) — a pinch (signature)
- Grated cheese (grana) — a good handful (final binding)
- Onion — one small (aromatic)
Ingredients
- Carnaroli or Arborio rice — 320 g (base)
- Beef marrow (optional) — 30 g (base fat)
- Butter — 60 g (binding)
- Hot meat broth — 1.2 liters (cooking)
- Saffron — 1 dose (0.2 g stigmas) (signature)
- Grated Parmigiano Reggiano — 80 g (final binding)
- Onion — 1 small, finely chopped (aromatic)
- Dry white wine — 1 glass (deglazing)
Method
- Infuse the saffron in a ladle of hot broth.
- Sweat the onion in some of the butter (and the marrow if using) without browning.
- Add the rice and toast it for 2 minutes while stirring, then deglaze with white wine.
- Add hot broth ladle by ladle, stirring, without drowning the rice, for about 18 minutes.
- Halfway through cooking, incorporate the saffron broth.
- Off the heat, vigorously bind with the remaining butter and Parmesan (the mantecatura); cover for 2 minutes and serve.
How it was made : Milanese legend attributes the addition of saffron to rice to a Duomo glassmaker's apprentice in the 16th century, who gilded his glass with saffron. By the 19th century, risotto giallo was already a bourgeois Milanese classic, enriched with beef marrow and bound with butter and grana — far from the poor man's polenta.
The contemporary twist : Plate the risotto 'all'onda' (in a wave), spread with a firm tap of the plate on the work surface, topped with a few saffron stigmas and a shaving of brown butter.
Sources : Pellegrino Artusi, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891) · Anna Gosetti della Salda, Le ricette regionali italiane
Alessandro Manzoni · Charactorium
