Comfort Food

This post is about risotto, a dish that I absolutely love and find comforting. It might not be fair to refer to risotto as a “dish”. To me, the name refers to rice cooked using a particular technique, but after that there are so many variations– from meaty risotti to vegetarian, from simple ones flavored only with wine to those featuring a dozen ingredients– that to call it a “dish” seems as much a misnomer as calling pasta a “dish”. This time I opted to make a meaty, stick-to-the-ribs version. It took some searching to track down some rice and cheese (I finally found some Carnaroli and some Grana Padano in a grocery store that stocks a lot of imported goods), but other than that, Ukraine happily provided me ingredients. While I was at the market picking up the meat and vegetables, I noticed that there were bags and stacks of fresh radishes, so I picked some up to make a salad. A Ukrainian friend who had never tired Italian food came over to observe, help, and eat

Pork and Mushroom Risotto with Radish Salad

I started brainstorming on what sort of risotto I wanted to make and did some searching on the internet. I found lots of recipes (some particularly tasty ones can be found here) and cobbled a few together to create my final dish. I decided that I wanted to use pork because it is light and slightly sweet and would not overpower the flavors of the wine and cheese. I had to wander around the vast meat section of the market to find a piece that was only 250 grams, and I got some weird looks from the pork ladies, but in the end, I found a nice little piece. I diced it fairly finely, salted and peppered it, and set it aside to relax for about an hour.

One of the ingredients that can truly make or break a risotto is the broth. I used a full liter of broth in this one, and I wanted it to give the dish a rich taste. However, to my surprise, I found I had only a tablespoon of concentrated chicken stock left from my last batch. So I mixed that with the liter of water and tossed in some celery stalks that were past their prime, a couple onions, black pepper corns, parsley stems, a bay leaf, the bone from the pork, and the stems from the mushrooms. I let this simmer for the hour that the pork was relaxing, and I ended up with a nice pork and mushroom tinted chicken broth.

After straining the broth, measuring out my rice and wine, slicing the mushrooms, and grating the cheese, I was ready to go. I started by heating my pan. Unfortunately, in Ukraine unless one is willing to pay for expensive, imported cookware, most available pots are very thin. So I had to use a diffuser that is probably older than I am to make up for my pan’s thin bottom. The downside is that this made heat control a bit tricky. Once my pan was hot, I threw in some butter and started to brown the pork along with some rosemary. When the pork was brown, I took it from the pan with a slotted spoon and then got the mushrooms started. After they were nicely cooked but still soft, I added them and what was left of their liquid to the pork.

Now it was time to begin the long, labor-intensive process that is making risotto. I added a little butter to the pan and poured in my rice. I stirred without pause for about 7 minutes while the rice fried. When the grains had started turning translucent, I poured in half a cup of warm white wine and stirred like hell. When the wine was almost completely absorbed, I added a ladle of hot broth and continued stirring.

Thus we began the process of making the risotto. For the next half hour or so, my friend and I traded off stirring the rice and adding more broth every time it started to get dry. When half the broth had been added and the rice was starting to soften, I added the mushrooms and pork and kept stirring. Finally when all the broth had been absorbed and the rice had tripled in size, I took the pan off the heat and mixed in grated Grana Padano and a pinch of cinnamon. The risotto was creamy and extremely rich. The mild flavors of the pork and mushrooms were a good match for the bite of the cheese and the richness of the broth. The cinnamon added a certain nutty quality that brought out the nutty, grain flavor of the rice.

After the risotto we drank wine and enjoyed the salad of thin radish slices, lettuce, and chervil that I drizzled with a mustard vinaigrette.