Teresa's Risotto Porri e Taleggio

A classic Italian rice dish with a creamy cheese broth

Thank you so much for your support! I now have over 250 readers, (wow!) and I appreciate every single one of you. Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting as I write what I’m experiencing and learning here in Italy. And you’re really going to love this post…

Coming to Italy I wondered, how will I learn how to cook Italian, being surrounded by all of Italy but no one to teach me?

As it turns out, our class of 13 represents 11 different countries, including Italy, and we all love to cook, and share recipes and techniques.

And so one of our native Italians, Teresa (Instagram @teresartist) invited us over to show us how to make Risotto Porri (Leeks) e Taleggio.

Here’s the recipe, but it doesn’t have quantities, so you’ll have to bear with the notes and photos for it to make sense. And special thanks to Geetika (@geetika_.05) for sharing her notes from the evening.

Ingredients

• Arborio rice (must be medium grain rice), maybe a couple cups or a half a pound.

• Leeks - Teresa used these ginormous Italian leeks, just one, maybe two for a kilo of rice; you’ll use one or two “normal” leeks with a half pound of rice.

• White wine - whatever kind you're drinking

• Cheese - this recipe uses Taleggio, which is nicely funky, but you can use another soft, melty cheese with some flavor, like Brie or Camembert. You’ll need at least a quarter pound, the more, the merrier. Chop it into chunks, and don’t worry about the rind unless it’s made of cloth or plastic.

• A bit of olive oil, and some salt

• Grated Parmesan or Grana Padana (they use them interchangeably, unless using Parm for something special), and some freshly ground black pepper for plating.

Prepare the leeks. First, wash up those leeks, and then chop up the white part to a small dice; toss the root but save the greens. Teresa put the chopped bits in a bowl of water to rinse them a bit more, and scooped them out by hand later, leaving all the dirt and grit at the bottom of the bowl.

Start the broth. Put the greens — you don’t need to chop them — in a pot of cold water and get it simmering. You’ll need at least 4X the volume of rice you’re using. Salt this broth — you never salt the risotto — and let it simmer while you work on the rice.

Toast the rice. Teresa put it in a big dry pan — I’ve done it with oil, but Teresa insisted it should be dry so the rice can absorb more broth. She stirred it and tossed it — constantly, so it doesn’t burn — until it got really fragrant, and then removed it to a bowl.

Cook the leeks. Scoop the leeks from the water into a sieve, drain well, add some olive oil and the leeks to the pan, and stir until they start to soften up.

Add in the rice. Mix that up nicely.

Add some wine. Pour a couple of big glugs into the pan with the rice and leeks, and stir and cook it until the smell of the alcohol is gone. This will add a nice acidity.

Start adding broth. Teresa added several big ladles at a time (just the broth, not the greens!), and explained you didn’t need to add just a bit and stir until it’s absorbed. It’s all the same. Keep stirring and adding and stirring and adding until the rice gets to a nice al dente texture. Teresa noted the rice package said 15-18 minutes, but this took closer to 30-35.

Add the cheese. Take the pan off the heat, and then stir the cheese into the risotto until it’s all melted and creamy, but still nicely thick.

The leeks have softened nicely and released their flavor to the rice, which is now coated with melted cheese broth thickened with starch from the rice.

Plate the risotto. At this point the recipe is done, but the dish needs to be plated, and that’s an important step. Teresa served a lump in the bowl, and then banged on the bottom to spread it evenly.

Finish plating with fresh grated Parmesan and fresh ground pepper.

Buon appetito!

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