Healthy Sustainable Italian Risotto

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And the new contemporary Italian cuisine

Ciao Italianista, I learned so much about modern Italian cuisine making this healthy sustainable risotto that I had to share it with you. I learned how to make this risotto from Antonia Klugmann during her conversations with Maddalena Fossati, the director of La Cucina Italiana. They held a live virtual culinary experience called my My Authentic Italian Table. I do not know how this came into my inbox, but it did, and I made time to watch it live. Then I made the risotto. It was amazing and so was everything I learned about modern Italian cuisine.

Healthy sustainable Italian risotto with a real true authentic taste

Il vero gusto italiano autenctico, the real true authentic Italian taste, begins with the idea of growing your own veggies and not wasting anything. Of course, this is not a new idea, but one that goes way back to the beginning of time in Italian cooking. Italian cooking has always been a cucina povera, a poor person’s cuisine, meaning the cuisine of the people. So nothing is wasted and whatever is available is used. I’ve talked about the idea of cucina povera before, and most recently in this article about tortellini. And previously on this site about Tyrolean cuisine.

This is a good lesson for me but not an easy one. When I make Italian cuisine, my idea of it being authentic is using real Italian top-quality ingredients even if it means spending a lot of money. What I have learned by making this risotto is that, yes, always use top-quality ingredients in Italian cooking but that I need to be more flexible in my thinking about how far that obsession goes. And when I do spend a lot of money on top-quality ingredients, the main thing I need to do is have gratitude and appreciation for everything that went into making this amazing product.

New contemporary Italian cooking

The new contemporary Italian cooking understands the suppliers and producers and how difficult it was to make their product. When you have this attitude of appreciation and understanding, then the cost of a top-quality ingredient like Parmigiano Reggiano is actually very reasonable. Like I said, I have no problem spending a lot of money on top-quality ingredients to make my Italian dishes. But where I need to be more flexible is in understanding that I can substitute a local top-quality ingredient instead of adding all the transportation costs to my top-quality ingredients and I will still be making authentic Italian cuisine.

The most local of all is to grow your own veggies. Or if that is not possible, you can at least grow your own herbs. Italian cuisine uses so many fresh herbs. I planted basil, rosemary, thyme, mint, marjoram, cilantro, parsley, and sage on my small patio. Here is a photo of my Italian herb garden:

Modern authentic Italian cuisine is also trying to use more vegetables and less meat protein to be healthier and more sustainable. And it’s about using every part of the vegetable and wasting nothing. This method for cooking risotto shows how to use every part of the pepper: the skins, the seeds, the flesh, and the juices. Nothing is wasted. And you need to see the ingredients not as objects, but as a living thing with a history. So when you go to the store to buy the peppers (if you can’t grow them yourself), handle them with awe and admiration and think about their story from seed on the farm to beautiful fruit in the store and now in your shopping cart.

Making the healthy sustainable Italian risotto

Now it is time to make the risotto! Here are the ingredients to make this delicious, sustainable, healthy, authentic risotto:

• Carnaroli rice (This is a type of rice, not a brand.)
• Peppers (red, yellow, and jalapeño ). The word for jalapeño in Italian is frigitello.
• Ruby red grapefruit
• Shallots (called scallonio in Italian)
• White wine
• Parmigiano Reggiano

Roasting the peppers

The first thing is to roast the peppers so that you can de-skin them and separate the flesh from the juices and seeds. Antonia shows three different methods for preparing the peppers. I just did the one where you put a thick layer of course salt on a tray and put the peppers on top. Then you roast them for ten minutes on both sides at the highest temperature your oven will go. I also ended with a minute on broil.

When they are roasted, remove the peppers from the oven and put them in a plastic bag until cool. Once they are cool, just slip off the skins and put the skins outside in the sun to dry. Make sure the rest of the pepper all lands in a bowl. Now open up the peppers and let all the juices and seeds run into the bowl. Save the juice to use as a liquid in the risotto. Take the baked, skinned, de-seeded peppers and put them into a blender to make a purée .

Making the burro acido

While the pepper skins are drying (they will be used to make a powder that goes into the risotto), make the burro acido. I had never heard of burro acido before making this risotto and it is the most amazing thing ever. You can make it for this risotto and there will be a lot leftover that you can use for many other things. I often just make a piece of toast and spread the burro acido on top like a very flavorful cream cheese.

To make the burro acido, chop up the shallots, sauté them with a little butter, then cover with a half-liter of white wine. Boil until the wine is reduced to almost nothing. Then put the reduced wine shallot base into the blender, add salted butter (a lot), squeeze half of the grapefruit juice in, and blend. Now you have burro acido. Put this aside.

If the pepper skins are dry, make the powders. Just put the dry skins in a grinder or blender and make them into a powder. I also baked the grapefruit peel and once it was dried out, I crushed it into a powder. The aroma is amazing.

Cooking the rice

Now it’s time to cook the rice. Put a little olive oil and salt in the pan and then put in the rice. The Italians measure rice with a pugno, or fist. So just put about 4 handfuls (pugni) into the pan and heat it up until it is hot to the touch. This step is crucial because it changes the shape of the rice ever so slightly. You want to make sure the tostatura (toasting) of the rice is hot but that the rice does not turn brown.

Now add a few ladles of hot water. You need to have the water heating in another pot and you will just add ladles of the hot water as needed. Now add a pinch of rice powder. You grind up some of the rice into a powder and add this to the cooking rice. Whisk in the rice powder as the water is started to boil.

The important technique of mantecare for healthy sustainable Italian risotto

This technique of whisking is so important and has to be done just right. The Italians call it mantecare. How you do the mixing or mantecare is so important that Antonia invented a new English word called “to mantecate”. Now you also add the juice of the peppers and mantecate bene! . In this modern authentic Italian cuisine, Antonia is using the juices of the peppers instead of stock which is more traditionally used. I used both because I just happen to have some juices from a freshly roasted chicken on hand.

Now add the pepper purée. Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the burner. It’s time to add the burro acido and the Parmigiano Reggiano. Whenever you add the fat, the risotto has to be off the heat. The risotto is finished and it’s time to plate it!

Put a serving of the risotto onto the plate. Sprinkle it with the pepper and grapefruit powders you made. Add some of the chopped roasted frigitello (jalapeño). And now inhale the aromas and taste the risotto. Think about all that went into this amazing healthy sustainable Italian risotto and how you used all the parts of the peppers and grapefruit. The dish is so simple and so tasty. It’s real and authentic and not very expensive. And you learn so many amazing tips about Italian cuisine like how to stir properly (mantecare) and how to make burro acido. I hope you give it a try. Let me know in the comments below. Grazie!

Con amore,
Justine