Risotto! Risotto! - Hardcover

Harris, Valentina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0304351814 ISBN 13: 9780304351817

Publisher: Cassell Illustrated, 1999

Synopsis

Shows how to make a basic risotto, and includes recipes for variants flavored with a wide range of ingredients, including cheeses, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, fish and other seafood, meats, fruits, and alcohol

About this title

Review

Valentina Harris describes her pleasure at having the opportunity to devote an entire book to risotto: and it shows. Risotto! Risotto! starts with the words "Making risotto is rather like making love. You must be in tune with and in the mood for what is going on. Be receptive to all the little creaking, popping, crackling noises..." Risotto is an exceptionally sensuous food, subtle, creamy and voluptuous, capable of infinite variety, ranging from ravishing simplicity and purity to fantastic elaboration. Risotto! Risotto! does this wonderful cooking method full justice.

Recipes are grouped by ingredient: Cheese and Egg; Vegetables; Mushrooms, Herbs and Truffles; Fish and Seafood; Meat; and (something of a surprise) Fruit, Alcohol and Sweet. The exemplary cheeses are creamy Fontina and pungent Gorgonzola; the risotto with beaten eggs is comfort food of the highest order. Artichokes, cardoons, spinach and walnuts, fennel and even potatoes are among the vegetables. Wild mushroom risotto, two versions of white truffle risotto, rocket, pesto, garlic and nettle recipes follow. Seafood recipes include mackerel (of all things), lobster, scallop, eel and cuttlefish with ink--the last gleamingly black and Art-Deco chic. Lamb, frogs' legs, duck, wild boar and hare are among the meats from which Valentina Harris coaxes risotti. The fruit-based and sweet risotti (strawberries, melon) of the final chapter are of recent origin and quite extraordinary, but recall the probable Arab origins of Italian rice cookery. And champagne risotto? A quite marvellous book. --Robin Davidson

About the Author

Valentina Harris is the noted UK authority on Italian food and cuisine. She published her first book Perfect Pasta in 1984 and her thirteenth book Simply Italian in June 1995. She is a popular television personality, having hosted 'Italian Regional Cookery' for the BBC in 1990 and she appears regularly on the BBC Production 'Ready Steady Cook!' As a qualified cookery teacher, she gives many demonstrations and hands-on classes both in the UK, at schools such as Leith's and abroad in countries such as South Africa, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. She appears regularly on radio and contributes as a food writer to many publications including The Times, The Evening Standard and Homes and Gardens. She also acts as a consultant to major food manufacturing and retailing organizations on product and recipe development.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cassell Illustrated
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0304351814
• ISBN 13: 9780304351817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160