Italian Cities: Milan - Milanese Risotto

 

I'm back to finish off the 20 Italian Cities, as I hate leaving things unfinished! It's been two years since I abandoned you, I hope you're doing good. I missed you :3

There's only 5 Italian Cities left including this one. Risotto makes for a tasty lunch and I've never had one made simply with saffron like this Milanese recipe.

Ingredients:

350 ml arborio rice

110g butter

1/2 teaspoon saffron

1 onion

100ml white wine

1 litre chicken stock

4 tablespoons parmesan

salt & pepper

First thing to do is to grind the saffron to a powder in a pestle & mortar. It was very easy to do, like the saffron barely had the strength to stay as strands.

It's such a beautiful colour! Add the wine to the mortar and mix the saffron into the wine. Melt 60g of butter in a pan on a medium heat and dice your onion. Saute the onion until it's translucent.

Add the rice and stir well for 2 minutes.

Stir in the wine, saffron and 1 teaspoon of salt.

The saffron makes the rice a gorgeous yellow colour! Stir well as the rice absorbs the liquid. Make up the chicken stock. When the liquid has almost gone, ladle in some stock and continue to stir and add stock until the rice has softened and the liquid is creamy. It'll take about 25-30 minutes.

Next, take it off the heat and stir in the remaining 50g of butter. Add the parmesan and stir well.

Serve in bowls with a little more parmesan on top.

This risotto had a very intense flavour but still felt like a very simply flavoured dish. We really enjoyed it. The rice was creamy, with a bite. My favourite thing about this dish was the beautiful colour the saffron gave it. Very nice!

I'm hoping to keep going through these last recipes, so I'll see you here next week 😀