Yes, that thing in the background of the photo is Dracula wine. Sorry, Dracula Merlot. It was a gift from a neighbor we had when we lived in Bracciano, as a souvenir from Romania, his homeland. I confess I only put it there to decorate the photo, because we still haven’t uncorked the bottle. I know there’s nothing uglier than selling a gift, but in case work goes badly and we had to invent new sources of income, I could get something for it by selling it to someone more of a geek with more financial resources. That said, I would have to be quite desperate, since I would really like to keep this memento of my former neighbors, because they were very good people.
Today it’s time for a risotto. Another typically Italian first course that, just like pasta, can be prepared in so many different ways. It seems that the Spanish were responsible for introducing rice into the Italian diet during the time they ruled the Kingdom of Naples in the 14th century. Even so, in Naples, rice could never steal the place of pasta as the preferred first course and they didn’t make too many inventions with it. It was in the northern regions where they experimented with this grain and they are considered the true inventors of risotto. The base of risottos is always more or less the same. Onion sautéed with butter and/or olive oil, dry white wine, and broth, vegetable or animal, depending on the other ingredients that compose it. The best known is risotto alla milanese, with saffron and beef marrow.
I, however, have chosen risotto with radicchio, sausage, and beer, because personally, it has the merit of making one of the most typical vegetables in the country attractive to me, but which I normally prefer to avoid: Radicchio. Radicchio is a variety of chicory, as I have already said, very appreciated in Italian cuisine. It is prepared a lot on the grill, but I only like it when it is a co-star of some dish, where it is combined with something that prevents me from only tasting its bitter flavor, like in this risotto, for example.
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The card
- 1 shallot
- 200 g radicchio
- 170 g carnaroli or arborio risotto rice
- 100 g sausage
- Half a glass of red or strong blonde beer
- 600 ml vegetable broth
- 15 g butter
- Olive oil
- Cut the radicchio leaves into strips and the shallot very small.
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil and the butter in a medium pan.
- When the butter has melted, add the onion and let it cook over low heat for 10 minutes.
- Add the sausage, from which we have previously removed the skin and crumbled, and let it brown.
- Add the radicchio and stir until it is very soft, but without it falling apart.
- Without stopping stirring, incorporate the rice and toast it for a couple of minutes.
- Pour in the beer and, when it has evaporated, start incorporating the broth. First a ladleful and, when it has been absorbed, another and so on, until the rice is al dente. It is difficult to calculate the exact amount of broth a risotto needs, as it depends on several factors. By following this procedure, we do not run the risk of adding more than necessary.
