Arborio rice

Ink is a seasoning, not a colour. Rice is the only thing that takes both.

Mantecatura: cheese and butter beaten in off the heat make the sauce.

Cold, cubed, last. Hot butter splits and the whole pan turns oily.

Acid goes in on dry grain so the alcohol burns off and the sourness stays.

Ladled hot, absorbed slowly. Starch only releases if the liquid stays hot.

Yellow, iodine-hay, and marrow underneath. Milan has not changed it since the 1574 legend.

Bitter leaf collapses into the starch; the wine acid holds the middle.

Stirred through at the end so the resin stays green, not stewed.

Sweet green against dairy starch, with the pods simmered into the stock.

Sulfurous stalks; the peelings make the broth, the tips go in last.

Zest at the end. All that fat needs a top note or the bowl reads heavy.

Soaking liquid becomes the stock; the rice does not need anything else.

Stirred in off the heat, never cooked in. Risotto is a vehicle.

The squid seasons the rice, the rice carries the mineral note.

Melted in at the start it makes the rice taste of beef with no beef.

Barely a flavour, mostly perfume. Fold it in with the heat already off.

Butter and starch are solvents. Shave it at the table, nowhere earlier.

An actual Lombard dish: the acid reads savoury against parmesan.

Bitter orange and quinine over dairy starch. Aggressive, and it holds.