Monza Risotto alla monzese
Our c hef Vincenzo, professor of food and wine at the Olivetti Institute in Monza and Vice President of APCI-Italy,
During the lesson, a student asked him: Chef, what do you think of the diatribe Saffron yes Saffron no?
Let’s reconstruct and share our Chef’s lesson…..
Risotto alla monzese saffron yes, saffron no.
- Excuse me chef, after watching the episode of 4 restaurants in Monza I was struck by the uncertainty that exists on a classic Monza recipe, the Monza risotto, but should saffron be put or not?
A) “Saffron is not included in the classic recipe “risotto alla monzese”
- A) Because the student asks me.
A) Because at the base of what we eat there are two assumptions:
- We are what we eat‘ as the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said
- You eat what you are and what you have – Brillat Savarin.
Popular peasant cuisine
To find a documentary answer you need to understand where to look for it, and in the gastronomic field to start a search it is useful to predetermine which code the recipe belongs to.
- What does it mean to which code and how many cooking codes do we have in Italy?
- A) – In Italy we have four codes of cuisine and they are –
- Code of peasant cuisine
- Seafood Code
- Code of aristocratic cuisine
- Code of ecclesiastical and conventual cuisine.
The handing down of gastronomic culture has used two ways, the first two codes the recipes have been transmitted by oral narration, from mother to daughter, from grandmother to granddaughter, while the aristocratic and ecclesiastical codes have been handed down mainly through writing.
So the certain and documented answer can be sought on condition that there are writings, drawings, cataloguing of all sorts otherwise a more anthropological/gastronomic approach must be used.
Risotto alla monzese popular peasant recipe
- That is?
- A) The two assumptions can be very useful to us, because they mean socio-economic variables that have conditioned nutrition, therefore cooking and hunger management. In this case, one of the greatest historians and historiographers in Italy is Prof. Montanari Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna
In the specific case of Brianza, in History of Brianza V Volume, Massimo Pirovano wisely deals with – Hunger from scarcity to abundance – in the period from the 800s to the economic boom.
- So chef, why don’t you go with saffron in the Monza risotto?
A) Because the risotto alla monzese is a dish of the peasant class who could not afford to buy saffron, because they lacked the essentials to fight food shortages, because they consumed meat or pork or farmyard meat, on Sundays.
Saffron only for the rich
Because the meal of each day was mainly made up of polenta or soups (because by cultivating the land they could take care of the vegetable garden) and when they had dinner with a soup, minestrone or soup this was the next day’s breakfast.
Meat, except for some parts of pork and poultry meat, beef was not used. Raising a cattle meant being able to sell meat to buy medicine and clothes, and not even milk was used because it was used to raise calves.
We can categorically exclude that the Brianza peasant recipe – risotto alla monzese – did not contain saffron.
Milanese risotto vs Monza risotto
- And the other ingredients?
A) we are talking about a risotto in Brianza, so butter, grana padano were available therefore present in the risotto. The other garnishing elements of the Monza risotto are: luganega (etymologically it would seem to derive from Lucania and in Lucania sausages were made ..) while for the wine red was used and not to give tannins to the risotto but to give color, chromaticity because if the rich flavored and therefore colored the risotto with saffron, the peasants colored it with what they had in their possession, that is red wine (mainly Nebbiolo).
- So the Milanese risotto with saffron while the Monza risotto with red wine, did I understand correctly?
A) Yes, in part, risotto with saffron is saffron risotto and not risotto alla milanese. The Milanese risotto involves the use of ox marrow (a delicacy of the aristocratic classes of the time)
- A) now it is clearer to me, one last thing, so is it possible that the use of luganega is attributable to the unavailability of the marrow as well as red wine is motivated as a substitute for saffron?
A) This question strikes me in a particular way because the gastronomic axiom has its own anthropological value.
