Risotto for the Masses

Disclaimer: The comments on these pieces often ask for the recipes I mention. I try to link the ones I can, but most of today’s mentions are from a cookbook. You can buy said cookbook here, or request that your local library obtain a copy.

Four kinds of risotto attempted (successfully) in five weeks must be some kind of record. The Guinness World Records judges probably won’t come knocking, but my satisfied guests might, as they come searching for seconds. And for this, I’m indebted yet again to the wonderful Emily Stimpson Chapman and her cookbook Around the Catholic Table.

I wrote about this cookbook soon after its publication last fall, raving about its wildly delicious (and decadent) mac ’n’ cheese. Since then, I’ve made plenty more of the book’s recipes and discovered, among other things, that the pork loin is a wonderful and easily transportable meal for families with new babies. While I wait for the outside temperature to rise enough to justify making Emily’s No-Bake Cashew & Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cake, I tried her romesco sauce (with my favorite sweet potato gnocchi) and was astonished at how much depth of flavor almonds add to a dish.

While I intend to try most, if not all, of the recipes in the book, there was one section that caught my attention on the first read-through: a chapter on risotto. Not just a few pages, and not just a couple of topping ideas. No, Emily has mastered the art of risotto (for it is indeed an art). She begins by laying out how to cook it for any occasion, complete with tips, tricks, wine, and lots of cheese. I’d read through the how-to a few times but still hadn’t worked myself up to preparing this touchy meal for a crowd. Baby steps were in order, so I took the first ones and bought arborio rice and vegetable broth on my next shopping trip.

Yes, I know I said vegetable broth. Generally, I cook with chicken broth — which, when I have a chicken carcass, time, and freezer space, I make myself — but I was planning this risotto as a Friday meal, and many of my friends are Catholics who give up meat on this day. So, vegetable broth it was to be -- at least for the first round.

These ingredients sat in my pantry for a rather long time, staring at me and silently judging my lack of resolve each time I opened the door. Finally, on the first Friday in Lent, I bit the bullet. In keeping with my baby-steps plan, I invited one friend over that night, knowing that, if it was a total failure, we’d have a good laugh and I’d still be able to scrape together a different meal for her. To my delight, however, it wasn’t a failure — it was fabulous. Both of us agreed that it might actually be a little too decadent for a Lentin Friday. Regardless, we enjoyed it immensely, and I can happily report that the mushroom topping is a keeper.

Emily has nine different risotto topping recipes in her cookbook, and the add-ins to the risotto base can change slightly depending on which topping you make. Mushrooms? You’ll use dry sherry while cooking your rice. Bacon and sage? Try de-glazing with white wine. She also includes a cauliflower and pancetta variation, as well as ones involving butternut squash, caprese, and even scallops.

After my first taste of that mushroom risotto, I was hooked. The following Saturday, my roommate and I devoured the sage and bacon version, along with a Guinness chocolate cake — a test run before I made the cake for some friends.

With two successes under my belt, I felt ready to broaden my reach a bit and cook risotto for more than two people. The Great North Wind tried to derail my plans, which included cauliflower and pancetta, by knocking out power to half of my city and rendering it impossible for me to obtain some necessary ingredients (such as the pancetta) at my grocery store. Thank goodness Aldi still had power, but it didn’t stock pancetta. The next best option? Bacon, cut small. Again, the risotto turned out wonderfully, and six of us lounged about in my living room, consuming steaming bowls of the creamy rice along with wine and my third iteration of Guinness chocolate cake. (There’s currently a raging debate over this cake and whether it beats out Claire Saffitz’s chocolate cake I made a few years ago. Time, and more taste-testing, will tell.)

This risotto-based gathering, unlike the other times, saw no leftovers at the end of the evening. But if you do happen to have leftovers, fear not. Risotto, as Emily wisely states in her cookbook, isn’t especially appetizing when reheated . . . unless you roll it into a log in parchment paper, let it firm up in the fridge, slice it into medallions, and fry it in butter. Everything, and I do mean everything, tastes better with butter. Well, my grandpa used to stir it into his warm prune juice each morning . . . but maybe that just proves my point?

My final risotto test would be two weeks later, when I offered to cook it for my sister’s birthday dinner. This time, I’d need to double the recipe — which Emily says you can do, but she recommends not doing more than that in one pot; otherwise, it will be a struggle to stir. And there is a lot of stirring in this process.

Running out of food is an almighty terror of mine, which is why, on March 22, I made that double batch of risotto, two kinds of toppings for it, and a salad, and convinced sibling No. 4 to make two loaves of focaccia. There were eight of us eating, but two of those eight were teenage boys and another was my uncle, who adores vegetables. This time, I combined two recipes I’d tried already — the mushroom topping and the cauliflower topping, which was a good idea in theory but led to some rather frantic hopping around the kitchen as I checked on bacon, sliced copious amounts of onions and fungi, and stirred two bags of arborio rice, which slowly absorbed around ten cups of chicken stock.

Despite my scatterbrained approach to this much larger undertaking, the meal was a hit with everyone, including sibling No. 7, who claims to hate rice.

The day ended with sorbet for some and leftover bake-sale lemon bars for others, and just enough extra risotto for a Monday lunch treat. Butter really does make the world a better place.