Ingredients

Servings 4

• ¾ lb Rice
• 1 onion
• 1 ¾ oz butter
• 1 ¼ cups Barbera wine
• 4 cups meat broth
• 3 oz butter
• 3 oz grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Preparation

10 minutes preparation + 16 minutes cooking

Finely slice onions and brown them in a saucepan with oil, butter, beef marrow and bay leaves. Add half the wine to the sautéed onions and a pinch of potato flour and thicken. Add rice ( Baldo rice or Roma rice)  turn up the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the seasoning has been absorbed.

As soon as the rice is toasted, add the rest of the wine which has been diluted with a ladle of broth, two tablespoons of tomato purée and the sage leaves, which will be removed before serving. Once this wine has also been absorbed, allow rice to cook by gradually adding beef broth.

Stir in butter and cheese, sprinkle generously with freshly ground black pepper, top with a sprinkle of freshly ground nutmeg and 3-4 tablespoons of hot Barbera wine.

This risotto used to be eaten with a spoon, never with a fork.

Chef's Tips

Instead of the ox marrow, it is preferable to use a good-quality meat stock.

Food History

Spices are one of the fundamental ingredients used to give food a certain aroma. Without a doubt, the most widely used spice in northern Italy is nutmeg, or the dried seed of the fruit of the Myristica Fragrans, an evergreen tree originally from the Maluku Islands.
Introduced to Europe in the 11th century by Arab merchants who used to use it to flavor beer, nutmeg was one of the most rare and expensive spices, together with saffron, until only recently. The high price of nutmeg was due to both its believed-miraculous properties and the difficulty of importing it to Europe. For a long time, nutmeg grew only on the island of Run, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the trip to reach the island was so risky that only half of the ships that set out to Run ever returned. In the 16th century, England and Holland fought for control of the island and of its precious fruit. At the beginning, the English took control of Run, but, after many years of fighting, the Dutch conquered the island in 1655. The island was not considered officially Dutch until a couple of years later when the Dutch gave the British, in exchange for Run, control of a small island off the coast of north America that had been illegally occupied by the Duke of York for a couple of years. In the end, the English proved to be the more fortunate nation because within a few years they developed a way to cultivate the nutmeg tree in Singapore – part of the British Empire – while the island that they had been awarded was none other than Manhattan.

Did you know that...

If eaten in excess, nutmeg can cause you to slightly hallucinate?

Other suggested recipes

• Milanese-style risotto
• Risotto Giuseppe Verdi’s style
• Risotto Parma-style