Risotto Alla Barese
I first heard about this risotto just a month ago on the night of my grandmother’s funeral as I sat at the kitchen table of my grandparent’s house picking at a paper tray of salty grissini. Well, that’s not actually true. Mom had mentioned it when we were going through a list of recipes we could do for this blog, but having never heard of it I wrote it down as “riso alla varese” and chucked it at the bottom of the list. A few months later, as my family gathered together in Bologna to say goodbye to my Nonna Silvana, who had finally gained peace after a long battle with dementia, I told my uncle about the plans for the blog. After a few moments of wry Italian cynicism, he started listing off the recipes that I had to include. Risotto alla Barese, he said, was one of my grandmother’s greatest contributions to the kitchen. As I questioned him on the recipe, he reached above my head and pulled down a floral binder from the top shelf. My grandmother, at some point in the last few years, had hand-written three copies of her recipes, one for each of her 3 children. I held the book like a treasure map, the rosetta stone of this project. Reeling, I thought about how I could trace the effects of time and distance on each dish, or, best yet, uncover something that was lost to time forever. “Be careful” my uncle warned, as I came spinning back to earth. The recipes she wrote here are broken, fragments based on what she remembered at the time, which was after the alzheimers had set in and a few years after she had stopped cooking all together. That doesn’t make it useless though, it’s another ingredient to use as I try and decode these recipes and stories, and try to bring them back to what they were before the age of transatlantic jets dispersed everyone, and the tradition of orally passing on cooking knowledge stopped being viable.
Risotto alla Barese, my uncle explained, was one of the very few dishes that my grandmother did not learn from her mother. It’s a puzzling dish, because it doesn’t seem to come from Bari, as the name implies. I won’t go into the research I did to try and find where this dish came from, because it was a dead end. The closest I could get was Tiella Barese, a layered dish of rice, tomatoes, mussels and potatoes. Furthermore, no one could really agree on how it’s made. I winced when I first read the ingredients. Potatoes and rice? Seems likestarchy overkill. I checked in with my brother and sister, who, like me, don’t remember this dish at all. But my mother and uncles were adamant about it’s greatness, so I set about trying to make it and found myself in what I will now refer to as the great tomato debate. The recipe from the binder and my uncle’s recipe did not include tomato or tomato paste. My mother on the other hand insisted, while reminding me that the name of this blog was My Mother’s Stove (dropped the mic and walked away.) The easter holiday brought my mother and uncle together where I let them duke it out without me. The consensus was to add the tomato. Nonna Silvana must have forgotten it. Mom and I spent the next 2 weeks working out the recipe, reviving it from it’s grave, carefully tweaking the quantities and adding and omitting ingredients. It took over 5 tries between the two of us.
Look, I wasn’t a strong believer in this dish when we started, but a few things brought me around. First of all, it calls for the use of the shank end of a proscuitto, the piece that purveyors routinely and tragically THROW AWAY. I instantly love any recipe that uses the scraps of food our generation discards, but what our grandparents, living through a series of wars and periods of real hunger, knew better not to. Plus, when I made this risotto, I realized that the potato brings a silky toothsome quality. It’s definitely hearty, but it’s also complicated with the unctuous and salty prosciutto and lighter zucchini. Most importantly, it seems especially poignant right now to celebrate my grandmother’s legacy in the kitchen continue, and maybe, in my own way, help continue the work she started with her handwritten binder of recipes.
SERVING DETAILS
6 Servings
INGREDIENTS
- 6-8 cups of good quality broth
- 100- 150g block of prosciutto, in one single piece with a good amount of fat *
- 1 very large yellow onion, diced
- 1 garlic clove, finely minced
- 1 large potato, peeled and diced into ½ inch cubes
- 3 large zucchini, diced into 1 inch cubes (slightly larger than the potato)
- 2 cups of Arborio or Carnaroli rice
- 3 Roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 100g of Fontina
- 3 tablespoons of tomato paste
- Olive oil, freshly grated parmesan, salt & pepper
*We use the very end piece here of the leg, the deli will give it to us at a discount since they can’t really sell it. If not, you can ask them to cut a thick slice off for you from the normal end. If you use the end piece, and they don’t remove the skin ask for about 200- 250 grams, since the skin will be about ½ the weight. Ask that they just trim off the expose tip of the leg, to expose un-handled meat on both ends. When you get it home, take all the skin off, leaving as much of the fat as you can intact. The ratio of meat to fat should be ⅓ to ⅔
METHOD
- In a saucepan, bring the broth to a very slow simmer, just to keep it warm.
- Meanwhile finely dice the prosciutto.
- In a very large saute pan with high sides, or a dutch-oven style pot, heat 3 tablespoon of olive oil.
- Saute the prosciutto in the olive oil, rendering all the fat and allowing the meat to crisp up.
- Add the onion and garlic and saute until golden and translucent but not brown.
- Add the potatoes and saute for 2 minutes, then add the zucchini and saute for another minute.
- Add the rice and stir only a few times, allowing the rice to toast in the oil.
- Add 1-2 cups of the broth, stirring as you add, and after. As you stir, allow the broth to soak into the rice, which takes about 3 minutes. Repeat this process several times, stirring constantly and allowing the rice to cook in only just a little liquid each time. Taste as you go, checking the doneness of the rice and the seasoning, adjust if needed.
- After 3 or 4 rounds (halfway through) add the tomatoes.
- When the rice is just about done, and the rice is cooked through but has a little al-dente quality, add the tomato paste, fontina and another ladleful of broth. Allow the broth to cook into the rice for this last round, but leave it slightly runnier than you would want it. It will firm up as it rests.
- Turn off the heat and add a handful of grated parmesan, a generous amount of cracked black pepper. Allow to rest for a minute, and then serve with a little more parmigiano on top.
