Milan, Bella's home town: saffron risotto and Sunday osso buco
Episode 3. Bella goes home to Milan for Artusi's golden risotto and an osso buco he was too nervous to write about, with fog, a stubborn saint and a gremolata row.
Two weekends ago I opened Artusi's book in Romagna, where he was born. Last weekend I followed him to Florence, where he lived. This weekend the book took me home. I was born in Milan, and my nonna cooked from this very copy in a small kitchen that smelled of butter and fog. So this episode is a little personal, and I warn you now that I will defend my city.
I need to, because Artusi was a Florentine by adoption and he does not always play fair with us. Milan was where he sent his manuscript to a big publisher, who replied that they did not deal with cookery books. Then, in his recipe for a homemade panettone named after his cook Marietta, he cannot resist a little dig.
It deserves to be recommended, because it is much better than the Milan panettone you find in the shops.
migliore assai del panettone di Milano che si trova in commercio
Pellegrino Artusi, recipe no. 604 (translated by Bella)
Rude. But when it comes to rice and veal he behaves himself, and he even sounds nervous. He gives three versions of risotto alla milanese, as if he could not make up his mind, and his osso buco opens with something close to an apology. Those are my two recipes this weekend: the golden risotto on Saturday and the osso buco on Sunday, which is how every Milanese grandmother has served them for generations.
Milan: rice, butter and a saint with a stubborn streak
Milan sits in the middle of the flat, wet Lombard plain, with the Alps on a clear day to the north and the Po to the south. That water explains almost everything on our plates. Rice has been grown in the flooded fields south and west of the city for more than five centuries, and canals called the Navigli once carried stone, cheese and grain right into town. Leonardo da Vinci, who spent nearly twenty years here and painted the Last Supper on a refectory wall, worked on the locks. Where Tuscany cooks with olive oil, Lombardy cooks with butter, from the cows that graze that same green plain. Artusi says so himself, in a recipe for fried chicken.
Then there is the fog. In November it rises off the rice fields and sits on the city for days, and you learn early that a heavy braise and a yellow risotto are the cure. Milan was rich, Catholic and busy, a city of merchants and bankers like Florence, but colder and in more of a hurry. We work hard and we eat seriously. The food is generous, never fussy.
Everything here is called Ambrosian, after Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan from 374 to 397, who was so stubborn that he made an emperor do public penance. He is our patron saint, and on his feast day, 7 December, the city does two things at once. Families wander the Oh bej! Oh bej!, the old Christmas fair now held around the Castello Sforzesco, for roast chestnuts and mulled wine. And in the evening La Scala opens its season, the most glamorous night of the Milan year, which my nonna watched on television every year in her slippers, criticising the sopranos.
Milan has given the world a few people I am proud of. Luchino Visconti, born here into the noble Visconti di Modrone family on 2 November 1906, made Rocco and His Brothers in 1960, about a family from the south trying to survive in this city, and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with The Leopard in 1963. Adriano Celentano was born in 1938 at number 14 Via Gluck, near the Central Station, and later sang Il ragazzo della via Gluck about the boy from that street. And Paolo Maldini, born in Milan in 1968, played his whole career for AC Milan and won the European Cup five times, just as his father Cesare had lifted it in 1963. One club, one city, a quarter of a century. That is Milanese loyalty, and it is also how we feel about risotto.
Saturday: risotto alla milanese
Milan likes a good story about its risotto, and the Veneranda Fabbrica, the body that has looked after the cathedral since the fourteenth century, tells the favourite one. In 1574 a Flemish master, Valerio of Flanders, was making stained-glass windows for the Duomo. His young assistant was nicknamed Zafferano, Saffron, because he put saffron into everything to make his colours glow. At the wedding of Valerio's daughter, the story goes, the apprentice slipped saffron into the rice as a joke, and the guests loved it. It is a legend, of course. The first written recipe for a saffron risotto in Milan comes from 1809. But I like a city whose national dish began as a prank in a stained-glass workshop.
Artusi's no. 78 is the plain version, with butter, onion, saffron and broth. No. 79, which I cooked, adds beef marrow and white wine, and he is honest about it.
This risotto is more complicated and heavier on the stomach than the one before, but tastier.
più complicato e più grave allo stomaco di quello precedente, ma più saporito
Pellegrino Artusi, recipe no. 79 (translated by Bella)
He is right on both counts, and in November I choose tasty. Then, in no. 80, he offers a third version with Marsala and backs away at once, with the politest bow to my home town in the whole book.
Without any pretension of taking the lead from the Ambrosian cooks, learned and ingenious in this matter.
senza la pretensione di prender la mano ai cuochi ambrosiani, dotti e ingegnosi in questa materia
Pellegrino Artusi, recipe no. 80 (translated by Bella)
Learned and ingenious. I will take that, maestro. Pound the saffron and dissolve it in a drop of hot broth first, as he says, and if you cannot get marrow, more butter does the job.
Recipe: risotto alla milanese artusi
Sunday: osso buco
Osso buco means bone with a hole: a thick slice of veal shin, cut across, with a round of marrow in the middle. It is cheap, slow and wonderful, which is the Milanese kitchen in one piece of meat. Recipe no. 358 begins with Artusi taking a step back.
This is a dish one must leave to the Milanese, being a speciality of Lombard cooking.
bisogna lasciarlo fare ai Milanesi
Pellegrino Artusi, recipe no. 358 (translated by Bella)
He goes on to say he will describe it without any pretension, for fear of being laughed at. I find this very touching. Here is a man who paid to print his own book against the advice of every publisher, and the recipe that makes him nervous is ours.
He had no reason to be. His method is simple and very good: the shanks go straight onto a raw mixture of chopped onion, celery, carrot and butter, then a little butter kneaded with flour to colour and thicken the sauce, then water and tomato. At the end the sauce is sieved, skimmed and scented with tiny pieces of lemon peel and a pinch of parsley. This is where the Milanese start arguing. The oldest version is in bianco, without tomato, flavoured with cinnamon and bay. Today most families finish it with gremolata, lemon zest, parsley and garlic chopped together. Artusi uses tomato and leaves out the garlic, and I followed him faithfully. The lemon wakes the whole pan up.
Serve it the Milanese way, next to Saturday's risotto, and give everyone a small spoon for the marrow. It is the best bite on the plate. My nonna called it the prize, and she always ate mine too.
Recipe: osso buco milanese artusi
Bella's tip: Braise the osso buco on Saturday afternoon while you make the risotto: it is even better the next day. On Sunday reheat it gently, add the lemon peel and parsley only then, and make a fresh small risotto. If there is risotto left over from Saturday, press it into a hot buttered pan and fry it into a crisp golden cake. In Milan we call that risotto al salto, and some of us make too much risotto on purpose.
What to pour
- Valtellina Superiore: Nebbiolo from the steep terraces of the Valtellina in the Lombard Alps, where they call the grape Chiavennasca. Fine, fragrant and perfect with veal.
- Oltrepò Pavese Bonarda: From Lombardy's biggest wine area, across the Po. Soft, fruity and often lightly fizzy, the everyday red of many Milanese tables. Lovely with the risotto.
- A Barbera from my cellar: Piedmont is next door, and its bright acidity cuts through marrow and butter. I always bring one.
Next weekend
I have been home, eaten too much marrow and argued about garlic, and now I close the book on Milan. Next Saturday I open it somewhere new. Keep a little saffron in the cupboard, and a small spoon for the good bits.
Recipes adapted from Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, 1891). Quotes translated from the Italian by Bella. Buy the book on Amazon.
