terryd50's Profile
Absolute Best Risotto You Will EVER Eat: Toasted Pistachio Gorgonzola Dolce
Sandeel, any good quality aborio, carnaroli or vialone nano. Alessi os ok - so is Zerto (sp?). They're all pretty good. It's taking the time to cook the risotto that really matters more than anything else.
Absolute Best Risotto You Will EVER Eat: Toasted Pistachio Gorgonzola Dolce
sushiegirlie: if you can stand wading through all of the posts about this recipe, one of mine offers proportions that really work (with or without the chocolate I mentioned). I promise you. Of course, if you say it is delicious, you will get blistered by Joe who tolerates NO DISAGREEMENT with his pronouncements about how things should be cooked.
Absolute Best Risotto You Will EVER Eat: Toasted Pistachio Gorgonzola Dolce
Well, of course all of your guests are still alive, as I am after eating what, to me, is a too rich, cloying, dish. I do not agree that I am making an entirely DIFFERENT risotto. I have simply modified a recipe that I think is too heavy, and have lightened it up. As the string of responses about this dish is considered to be a classic by the CHOWHOUND proprietors, I see where you are compelled to "defend" your recipe, and that's fine. That won't change the fact that I prepared your recipe EXACTLY as you instructed, and the results are what they are. That doesn't make you or me right or wrong. The addition of the chocolate is obviously just a conceit, meant to add a touch of sophistication to the dish. That, in a very small way, "alters" the dish as you conceived it. As for the "hundreds of times" you have prepared the dish over the years, I sincerely hope you are not suggesting that it always turns out the same, because that simply is not humanly possible. Not only are there variables of freshness of ingredients, of quality of ingredients, of the temperatures at which they were all stored in places over which we have no control (shipping pallets, cheese shops, manufacturing facilities, etc.), and even of the vintage of the very good wines you insist be used to prepare this dish, there are also the intangibles, such as the dog that barks and distracts us and takes our focus away from the dish for fifteen seconds, such as how many other dishes are we preparing at the same time that evening, such as the temperature in our own kitchens, or how many minutes more or less the gorgonzola is out of the refrigerator than the last time we fixed it, and so on, and so on. Many, many factors go into how a finished dish will present, and taste. The other night I fixed veal birds, using a recipe I have used for years (Marcella Hazan's), and the dish was most disappointing. Why? I cannot say. Same high quality veal, same excellent oilve oil, same cooking time at the same heat level. I think there can only be one of two explanations. I cooked the birds too long (unlikely, but certainly possible), or given that I only use free-range veal, and there is NO WAY to predict how "muscular" that cow became while grazing, the veal was tough. If I have the same experience again with the same butcher shop, I'll change meat-cutters and see if that helps. Otherwise, I have no explanation other than that I must have cooked them too long. I stand by my experience with your recipe, which shouldn't diminish your or anyone else's more agreeable experience. That is where differences in taste come into play, which is why I took the time to let others know of my experience. For some, it will validate their attempts with the dish.
Absolute Best Risotto You Will EVER Eat: Toasted Pistachio Gorgonzola Dolce
As Emeril LaGasse is so fond of saying, "It's only cooking". Don't be afraid to try it. The absoltely worst thing that can happen is that you'll order in a pizza and have a good laugh!
Absolute Best Risotto You Will EVER Eat: Toasted Pistachio Gorgonzola Dolce
So, here I am, Terry-come-lately to this discussion, and after reading the recipe originally posted, and the comments/replies, and after preparing the dish TWICE, it is with some trepidation that I add my two cents. The back story is that I had dinner at "Il Pagliaccio" restaurant in Rome last month, and among the dishes was a pistachio risotto with MELTED CHOCOLATE in the middle (not a lot of chocolate). It was stunning.
A couple of weeks ago, I was preparing a birthday dinner for a dear friend, and I decided to try to replicate the dish from "Il Pagliaccio". In the course of my effort, I came across this posting and decided to try it, adding the chocolate in the middle.
As mentioned at the outset of my posting, I prepared this recipe TWICE. The first time, I did as instructed, and the dish was cloying, overpowering, and almost inedible. Calling it "too rich" vastly understates the excess. There was nothing enjoyable about this risotto.
The second time, I prepared a much more restrained version, and it was spectacular; it simply soared.
At the risk of starting up the teasing again, what white wine you use is irrelevant. It is a matter of taste, and pocketbook. Of course, don't use "two-buck chuck". Second, every dish any of us prepares will reflect the quality of the ingredients that we use, so use the best chicken stock you can afford or have the time to make. A high-end packaged stock is just fine - or buy a quart of low or no salt broth from a local Jewish deli, to save time. Third, please do NOT use all that butter. It will gag you to try to eat this dish, if you do. Fourth, make what I call the "basic risotto" however you please, as a matter of taste. Personally, I prefer two things that are a slight departure from most risottos, and I have made Lydia's risottos, Marcella's, Splichal's, etc. This is just my personal preference, and that is, I never use onions in my risotto. I only use finely minced shallots - minced, please, not "chopped". I also usually use only olive oil in lieu of butter. It makes the dish a bit more refined in my opinion, keeps the fat content a little lower (I know, I know; it's like eating low-fat ice cream), and lessens the cloying taste all that cheese tends to impart to the dish.
Having said that, in this instance, I used half olive oil and half butter in MUCH smaller quantities than the original recipe calls for, and I think the dish benefited.
Trepidation aside, I feel obliged to say that the amounts of gorgonzola and parmesan used in the recipe as originally posted, make the dish inedible, and as thick as wallpaper paste, or spackle.
When I made the dish the second time, in a more restrained manner, it was perfection on a plate, and the chocolate a la "Il Pagliaccio" made it more delicious than I could have imagined.
Do buy the best, freshest gorgozola dolce you can afford, and buy it at a cheese shop. not in the market. Why? Because gorgonzola dolce isn't that big a seller, so it sits and gets old in a market, but will be fresh, fresh, fresh at a cheese shop.
If you are dedicated to making this dish a part of your repertoire, experiment a bit to find your own "sweet spot" with the proportions. I found that, to a full pound of rice (two cups), a half pound of gorgonzola was plenty. Even a little less would have been okay. You can use caneroli or arborio; that is also a matter of preference. I generally prefer caneroli, but if the cupboard only has arborio, I won't make a special trip to the store for the "better" rice.
I found that a half-to-three-quarters-of-a-cup of grated parmesan was plenty (lean towards the half-cup). Though freshly shelled nuts are always better for any recipe, using a bag of pistachios that you then toast in the oven is okay, too.
As for how long to boil, and when to add the gorgonzola, that is also a matter of taste. I find that, when I make risotto, it is ready to eat at about eighteen minutes. I begin to taste every 30 - 45 seconds at fourteen minutes, and pull the pot off the flame as soon at that "moment" arrives.
I added the gorgonzola at the fourteenth minute, and worked it in over the next two minutes. The rice was done at sixteen minutes. I think it was done that soon because I used Trader Joe's arborio, instead of a higher quality rice. Better rice takes longer to cook just right, to the correct "crunch" factor.
Immediately after I pulled the pot off the flame, I mixed in the grated cheese and the pistachios. I put the risotto into individual bowls, added about an ounce (I didn't measure, I just put a few small pieces) of dark chocolate in the middle, and presented the risotto to eat. Spectacular.
P.S. I covered each bowl for thirty seconds, to allow the chocolate to melt. I'm guessing that it would have melted anyway, but I wanted to be sure that people didn't get served risotto with a piece of chocolate in the middle.
