I had no real conceptual understanding, let alone appreciation of risotto until I encountered Nigella Lawson, from whom comes so much of my formative knowledge of food and the joys therein. In her 2010 book Kitchen, she speaks of “the solace of stirring” reiterating her stance that risotto’s comfort and calm emanates not only from its soft babyfood texture, but from the stirring itself, “the ritual of unchallenging but repeated actions”. There’s no fast-tracking risotto — or at least, if there is, I don’t want it — for twenty-five minutes you and the stove and the spoon are one, watching the rice rise under your clockwise or anticlockwise motion. It’s positively meditative.
Considering I lost most of Feburary to repeatedly testing a peanut brittle recipe where the science never quite matched my vision, it was a relief to have this recipe for triple tomato risotto stick the landing perfectly, its deliciousness providing as much comfort as the process of making it. I guess it’s good to be culinarily humbled now and then, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, though more for cost-of-living reasons than maintaining my ego.
Hungry and Frozen 