I took a course some years ago at Eataly on how to make italian risotto and loved it. One of the items we were suppose to cover in the course but did not get to it was pasta risottata. I thought it was a really intriguing concept.
Since then I started experimenting and making my own version of pasta risottata even to the point of thinking that risotto is not just a dish but a process: you can prepare a lot of things as if making a risotto.
Luckily my family is happy with the result and it is now our standard fare for lunch on weekends.
I will write below some of my thoughts and recipes of what came out of this experience.
Mushrooms with blue cheeseNovember 15, 2024
I am not sure where I got this from. I do remember my aunt, the writer Alicia Plante, back in Buenos Aires, mentioning a recipe of baked fish with blue cheese that I prepared a few times. In the US I adapted it using big mushrooms instead of fish. But maybe I got the idea somewhere.
1 Get some big round mushrooms, for example, shitake mushrooms. I read that one should never wash the mushrooms with water as they get ruined somehow but gently remove any impurities with a soft brush.
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Pasta verdeNovember 2, 2024
After a fair number of iterations this is the result of my cooking pasta with greens. At home we just call it Pasta Verde. This version is with Swiss chard but a real nice combination is dandelion leaves (tarassaco in Italian) and Swiss chard (bieta). You can see how the various steps follow those for cooking a risotto.
1 Start preparing about an hour in advance a thick broth to use to cook the pasta.
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Potatoes and Swiss chardOctober 19, 2024
Many years ago after an invited seminar talk at ISTA in Vienna we went with my host Tamas Hausel and some of his group for dinner to a Croatian restaurant. I had fish I think and a side dish of potatoes and chard, which I really loved. I have been trying to reproduce it from memory ever since. I found out later (while on vacation in Lussinpicolo) that it is actually a standard traditional dish in Croacia known as blitva (which simply means chard).
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