Of risotto

Though by and large I am not a rice eater-- indeed, I tend to avoid all carbs in general --I confess a longstanding fascination with the dish of risotto. It is a surprisingly fiddly and labor-intensive dish, requiring many small doses of hot broth and near-constant stirring or pan shaking over the course of an hour to prepare. It takes a lot of time and effort, but as long as you follow this procedure you will be rewarded with the miraculous sight of seven cups of broth and white wine being drunk by a mere two cups of short-grain rice, which release an amazing sauce that comes from a combination of that cooking liquid and the rice's own starch. So many things about cooking seem like miracles to me, if only because someone somehow managed to discover the precise complicated procedures that yield fabulous prepared foods, but the sauce that emanates from properly cooked risotto rice is particularly amazing to me.

As I said, since I didn't grow up eating rice I don't have much of a taste for it, and I try to keep off carbs anyway, I don't make it very often. And when I do, I make a simple arborio version with sauteed mushrooms and caramelized onions. But someday, when gathering a group of dear ones and I have the money to spare, I want to go to some little North End grocery store and buy myself some shanks of veal and delicate threads of saffron and make a real risotto alla Milanese beneath a flawless osso bucco, the rice made savory with the marrow bones and as yellow as the sun.