Recipe below: Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage
I like a risotto where you can barely see what’s in it, everything cut tiny, no big chunks. When you take a bite, you’re surprised by all the flavor in a dish that looked like nothing much. The complexity of risotto is hidden by its simple appearance. Finely chopped chicken livers, minced porcini, a fine dice of leeks, a melt of gorgonzola, ingredients like those can be hidden away in a bowl of white grains just ready to burst forth in your mouth. This risotto dichotomy reminds of the couple in the film The Big Night who get talked into ordering the seafood risotto and are completely perplexed when it comes to the table looking like nothing more than a plate of soupy white rice. I don’t remember the exact lines, but it went something like this: “I don’t see any seafood,” the woman says, scraping through the plate with her fork. “Where’s the seafood?” “It’s in there, the chef says. “It’s just cut really small.” They don’t believe him, and to his horror they order a side of spaghetti. Risotto with a side of spaghetti. What a concept.
I love risotto. I love all the stirring. I’m not a fan of the oven method where you put the thing together on top of the stove and then stick it in the oven with lots of broth until the rice is tender. It works, sort of, but I find you have to do more last-minute fiddling to get it creamy, meaning stirring it once it’s out of the oven, balancing the seasoning, and adding stuff. For me, that all gets accomplished over the 17 minutes or so of stovetop attention. I don’t stir constantly, but I stir a lot. It’s a beautiful process. I get to experience the aroma of the wine cooking out as the steam rises into my face, the changing smell and look of the thing with each addition, and the way the rice swells up and indicates to me that it’s almost time. I don’t want to miss all that. Maybe if I were working in a restaurant and had to make 50 risotti a night, but at home, why bother at all if you don’t want to get involved?
I prefer carnaroli rice to the other risotto rice varieties I can find here. This time around I used Acquerello brand, from Piemonte, grown by the Rondolino family since 1935. Carnaroli is the only type of rice they’ve ever grown. I order it from Gustiamo. Its color is not chalk white, like most risotto rice, but more golden, and the aroma when cooking seems a bit deeper than other brands of carnaroli I’ve tried. There are reasons for this. The rice is actually aged, which serves to open it up, allowing for more liquid to flow though the grains. Also, they don’t strip it to stark white when they process it, so you get that pretty yellow hue. And they’ve figured out a way to reintegrate the germ back into the kernels, so you get rice that’s more whole and healthy. Nice to know.
Fennel and saffron make a beautiful flavor combo that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever cooked, or even eaten, a bouillabaisse. It’s also used in the cooking of Sardinia, most beautifully in their sausage ragù served with malloreddus, a gnocchi-shaped pasta. I love that dish, and it was my inspiration for this risotto. I use a fair amount of saffron in my cooking. I’m drawn to its sweetly medicinal flavor, which to me is not at all floral in the usual sense , despite being made from the red-orange pistils of a type of crocus. It’s a unique flavor, hard to describe. Maybe like bitter honey, but that’s not quite right either. Maybe bitter honey with a hint of barnyard?
In the past I’ve mostly bought Spanish saffron, usually from Kalustyan’s, an amazing spice shop on Lexington above 28th Street. If you’ve never been, visit! The aromas will blow your mind. This time around I bought saffron from Iran, which was beautifully flavored and moist. There’s also such a thing as American saffron. Last summer I met the people at Green Owl Farm, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., who grow saffron crocuses and harvest their own saffron from them. I didn’t know you could grow those flowers upstate, but I guess why not? Regular non-saffron crocuses are popping up all over my backyard as of this writing. Green Owl packs big pinches of saffron threads into little glass bottles. I haven’t yet bought from them, but I will. Theirs is a labor of love to be sure.
Risotto should get to the table pretty soon after it’s done just tender, but you don’t have to get crazy about it. If you need time to get people seated, you can let it sit for 5 to 8 minutes. It will thicken some, but then just add another ladle of broth and stir it in right before bringing it out. It’ll be fine.
Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage
About 6 cups homemade chicken broth
½ teaspoon saffron threads, lightly dried and ground with a mortar and pestle (see note below)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups carnaroli rice
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
3 mild, fresh Italian sausages, the casings removed, the meat pulled into little bits with your fingers
1 large fennel bulb (choose a bulb with lots of fronds), cut into small dice, the fronds lightly chopped
½ teaspoon fennel pollen or freshly ground fennel seed (if you’re sausage is heavily seasoned with fennel, you’ll want to use about half as much)
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
Salt
About ½ cup dry white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
A big chunk of Parmigiano cheese
You’ll want to have ready a wide, shallow-sided pan. I’ve found that that’s best for keeping the evaporation constant and the stirring smooth and easy. I used an 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad pan.
Pour the chicken broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat to really low, and stick a ladle in the pan.
Put the ground saffron in a small cup or bowl, and add about ½ cup of the hot chicken broth, giving the saffron a stir to dissolve it. The broth will turn a beautiful bright orange. Set it aside.
Set your risotto pan on a burner right next to the chicken broth. Turn the heat to medium. Add half of the butter and a big drizzle of olive oil. Add the rice, the onion, the sausage, and the fennel, holding back the fronds, and stir everything around to sauté it well. Try to break the sausage up into little pieces. Season with the fennel pollen or seed, the nutmeg, and a little salt. When the rice and everything is well sautéed, about 3 minutes or so, add the wine, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.
Now start adding broth, a few ladles at a time, stirring fairly often (but not obsessively) until the pan goes almost dry. Keep adding more broth and letting the pan go almost dry repeatedly until the rice is just tender. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth. I like to add it at this point instead of at the beginning so it stays really fresh-tasting. Saffron has an ephemeral nature and can fade out if cooked too long.
After about 12 minutes or so, you’ll notice the rice start to swell and the entire dish start to look creamy. I usually give it a taste after about 15 minutes to see where it’s at. In my experience the entire process takes about 16 or 17 minutes for tender but still firm kernels.
When you’ve reached this point, add the rest of the butter, a good amount of black pepper, and a few big gratings of Parmigiano, and give it a good stir. Turn off the heat, and adjust the consistency by adding more broth if needed. I like my risotto loose but not soupy. Taste for salt, and ladle the risotto into bowl. Top with the chopped fennel fronds and an extra sprinkling of Parmigiano. Serve right away.
A note on saffron: Saffron should be slightly moist and have brilliant red orange color when you buy it. If the threads are maroon and brittle, it’s old. Yet for it to open up and release its essence, it needs to be dried enough to be ground (dropping moist saffron threads in hot liquid is a bit of a waste). What I do is take a small sauté pan and set it over medium heat. When it’s warm, I turn off the flame and add my saffron threads, letting them dry for about a minute, just long enough so they lose a bit of moisture. Then I can grind them to a powder in a mortar and pestle. Now when I add a hot liquid to the saffron, the flavor will open full-force. Not a thread will be wasted.
Erica De Mane 
Count me in! I make a Sardinian ragu and so enjoy the flavours of the fennel and saffron together. Carnaroli is the rice of choice with us too. I’m going to have to wait a bit for our local fennel to show up at our farmer’s market. It’s a bit of a dance right now trying to avoid purchasing produce from the US. Such a sad state of affairs. So…your recipe is definitely a keeper to be enjoyed in June or around then!
Hi, Isn’t fennel with saffron such a beautiful combination? But, yes, being an American right now is an embarrassment. XXErica
This made me think of you. I can’t wait to see you. Love, Kay
Hi Kay, Yes, lets get together. I’d love to hear about your Mexico City trip.
And why we all of us who are on the same side need to stick together! Having connections on FB with people like yourself is very important to me.