Rice Milano Style with Saffron

for 4 people

medium difficulty

preparation: 10 minutes
plus time for making meat stock

cooking: 20 minutes
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Traditional recipe

The authentic recipe has another ingredient: beef bone marrow (about 50 g - 1 3/4 oz) to be melted together with butter. Now its use is forbidden in Italy. In any way the secret for this dish is to use a very good saffron. You can also add mushrooms or little pieces of Italian sausage to the ingredients; so you'll have a good one-plate meal. Otherwise you can serve it as a first course and then the boiled meat as the main dish.

Prepare the stock. Pour into a pan 2 l (75 fl oz - 9 C) water; add the peeled onion and beef meat. Season to taste with salt and bring to the boil; when the water boils, low the heat to just the simmering point, half-cover and leave to cook for about an hour. At this point add chicken and turkey and continue cooking a further one hour, half-covered and on a low heat. Remove fat, filter the stock and keep it boiling while you are preparing risotto.
Peel and chop the onion; put it together with half the butter in a saucepan. Melt the butter and sauté the onion over a very low heat. If necessary, add 2 tablespoons hot stock. Continue cooking for about a quarter of an hour. Add the rice and cook, over a higher flame, for 3-4 minutes until it looks milky, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add 2 ladlefuls of meat stock, and simmer until absorbed, stirring. Keep adding stock, ladle by ladle, until rice is tender, according to the instructions on the package. Shortly before the end of cooking time (5 minutes) whip in the saffron.

Switch off the gas, add the remaining butter, stirring, sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese, if you like, and serve.

For a faster and lighter recipe.

- We use 8 tablespoons olive oil instead of butter and just before serving we sprinkle only with Parmesan cheese and don't add any butter.
- If we want an even lighter dish, we prepare stock with good quality bouillon cubes in chicken or vegetables flavors; besides we use 4 tablespoons dried or fresh chives instead of onion and add 2 teaspoons dried marjoram.
- Another suggestion is adding wine (good quality red wine), before stock, and simmering until absorbed, stirring.