"Leek Risotto"

Tonight, I made another recipe from A Culinary Journey Through Time; the "Leek Risotto." This recipe is categorized by the authors of that book as "medieval", probably because it is based on rice, which was not used in quantity in Europe until the Middle Ages, though the Food Timeline notes that historians are divided as to whether risotto originated in the 16th century (and is at least arguably late medieval) or the 20th (and is definitely modern).

It turns out that risotto is usually is made from a special rice called arborio rice, which is grown in Italy; it may also include bits of vegetable and meat, somewhat like modern "Chinese" fried rice. Unlike the kinds of rice that most people are familiar with in the United States, arborio rice absorbs water very slowly, and remains very dense and firm after it has done so. For that reason, arborio rice has to be simmered slowly in liquid, and stirred constantly during the simmering, so that it does not stick to the pan and burn. 

Before I selected the recipe and went to the supermarket in search of "risotto rice" (which is what the recipe told me to look for), I had not heard of arborio rice, and I had never made a risotto before.  My experience suggests that making a risotto--or at least the "leek risotto" I attempted--is not difficult, but it does require constant and close attention for the 20 minutes or so that the rice takes to cook. 

As always, I did not follow the recipe in A Culinary Journey Through Time exactly as written, and it may be interesting for me to explain my substitutions and choices.  The book's recipe starts by sautéing leeks and onions, adding the risotto rice and liquid to cook it, and then adding chopped up bits of ham and  grated cheese to the mixture after the rice is cooked. For liquid, the recipe recommends meat stock and either white wine or "apple wine".  Because of my husband's distaste for alcoholic beverages (even when used for cooking) and his dislike of ham and cheese, I substituted apple juice for the wine and bits of roast pork loin for the ham. For the meat stock, I used the liquid remaining from when I roasted the pork, and some purchased beef stock.  

The recipe was a bit unclear about how to combine the ingredients. It states: "Fry the onion and the leeks in 1 tbsp butter/lard.  Add the rice and continue frying until it goes clear." Until *what* goes clear?  The rice, or the leeks and onions?  I couldn't imagine that rice grains would ever go "clear" under heat, especially if they were cooked *before* adding liquid to the pan.

I resolved the conflict by consulting the directions on the package my arborio rice came in, and proceeded thus. First, I sautéed the leeks and onions in my biggest skillet until they were getting translucent. Then I heated the stock in a separate cup, added the rice to the skillet, and then immediately followed by pouring enough stock into the pan to create a simmering mass.  I kept stirring the leek/onion/rice mixture while it simmered and continued adding the various liquids (stock and apple juice) to the skillet a bit at a time.   I ran out of the amount of liquid called for by the recipe before the rice was done, so I added more stock, bit by bit, until the rice seemed plump, and soft enough to be easily chewed. Then I turned off the heat and added in the meat.

People talk about risotto being "creamy" after being cooked.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, and my final result wasn't exactly creamy, but my rice was easily chewable and adhered to itself in a moist but dense mass, so I think I got the cooking part approximately correct.

How did it taste? Pleasant enough, though a bit unexciting. That wasn't because of a lack of spices.  It didn't need salt, because the butter I used to saute the leeks and onions was salted and the pork was more than adequately salted. I did not use black pepper either, since the recipe did not call for it, though pepper might have given the dish a bit of useful zing.  I suspect that my taste for foods with plenty of different herbs just led me to categorize the risotto as dull. Chances are, most people would have liked it. My husband did.

Overall, I'd consider my risotto a success, though because of all the stirring it requires I probably won't make it very often.  On the other hand, I will probably try making it a few more times, because I have plenty of arborio rice left.  My husband suggested that I try using orange juice instead of apple juice the next time I make this recipe, and that sounds like a good idea to me.  It probably would not even make the recipe less historical, since our modern "sweet" oranges had made it to Italy and Iberia by the late Middle Ages.

I'd like to conclude with a word of caution for anyone interested in reading and experimenting with the recipes in A Culinary Journey Through Time. The book has to be used with care, particularly by people who do not have a lot of cooking experience, because the book is not always explicit (or, as I noted above, correct) in its cooking directions. I don't know the reasons for this, though I have some guesses.

First, the book is a translation of an original Danish German text [see comment from Regula below], and the translators may not always have been sure how best to convey the intended directions into English.  Second, the authors are most interested in recipes that describe early cooking techniques that are no longer used, or are rarely used (such as burying wrapped food in the glowing embers of a fire pit), and are less concerned with describing more common tasks such as the cooking of risotto rice.   Either way, I recommend using A Culinary Journey Through Time as more of a guide to food experiments than as a Bible for what was or wasn't eaten in early Europe--and that's really all I think the authors intended.

The next "experiment" I have planned is to revisit my old friend, the barley and leek pot--but with rabbit instead of duck.  Watch this blog for more details!