How To Cook The Perfect Risotto Nero

Risotto al nero di seppia is a Venetian classic that combines two of La Serenissima’s favourite ingredients: rice and seafood from the lagoon. The ink – generally harvested from the more generously supplied cuttlefish than the squid that is often preferred in English versions – gives the rice a creamy, distinctly maritime richness that pairs beautifully with the sweetness of the cephalopod.

The dish’s wider popularity is, I suspect, as much down to its striking appearance as its lovely flavour: few chefs can resist the temptation of a jet-black canvas for their creative flourishes. My problem is that, whenever I make it at home, it turns out an unappetising dirty-grey colour. So, what is the secret to making risotto nero that looks as good as it tastes?

The cephalopods

Although risotto nero in the Veneto tends to be made with cuttlefish as well as their ink, many of the recipes I use suggest squid as a substitute. This ought to be welcome news: while popular wisdom holds that cuttlefish are much cheaper, they prove impossible to come by in any of my local fishmongers, even though they are flourishing, apparently, in ever-warmer seas. I eventually find them lurking at the bottom of a capacious chest freezer at the back of a Chinese supermarket, under the label “squid”.

Cuttlefish are often said to have a stronger, meatier flavour than squid, but I think the difference is principally one of texture: cuttlefish seem to be sturdier and lack the delicately trailing tentacles that are one of the main attractions of their cousins. (The late Alan Davidson’s description of cephalopods as “like bags with heads on top and eight or 10 arms or tentacles sprouting therefrom” is apt.) After a week dealing with both, I have to admit I prefer squid, because it cooks more quickly, but use whichever you can get your hands on – it is more important that they are small and thin enough to soften in the same time as the rice (note that this is a dish in which they should retain some bite, as a contrast with the creamy risotto).

The recipe from Eataly, the global Italian food hall chain, uses prawns, rather than cuttlefish. This may or may not be a traditional variation, but it seems to make little sense. Given that risotto nero must be made with cuttlefish or squid ink, it would seem more logical to pair this with the beast that created it.

The liquid

One advantage of using prawns is that you can produce a stock from the shells. This makes Eataly’s risotto sweet and nuttily delicious, although it is emphatically shrimp-flavoured, rather than tasting of cuttlefish. Italian cookery bible The Silver Spoon and Tom Aikens both use fish stock, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ The River Cafe Classic Italian Cookbook suggests fish stock or water and Bruce Poole of Chez Bruce in London recommends fish stock, light chicken stock or water.

Chicken is my usual choice for lighter risottos; it imparts a savoury element without too much in the way of meatiness. Here, though, while it certainly works, giving Poole’s recipe an elegant richness, it doesn’t blend in as seamlessly as The River Cafe’s water, which yields a surprisingly punchy result. Best of all, however, is a subtle fish stock. Be sure to taste it before use, and dilute it further if it is very salty or strong, because both squid and cuttlefish have a delicate flavour.

Wine-wise, most risottos use the cool, dry whites of the north-east, although the Eataly cooking method mentions red – which is confusing, given that the ingredients list specifies white. I decide to give red a try anyway, on the basis that it might help with the colour of the dish, but the acidity of white proves more pleasing and you can drink the rest of the bottle with dinner.

The rice

The River Cafe and Poole call for vialone nano rice, which, since it gives a slightly less creamy result than The Silver Spoon’s carnaroli, is more traditional with fish and seafood. My testers enjoyed both. Arborio is definitely a poor third – less starchy and more prone to breaking, it is the most widely available of the three, but use either of the others if you have the choice.

The flavourings

All risottos, or at least all those I have come across, start with a flavour base of softly fried alliums. The River Cafe recommends red onion, Poole and The Silver Spoon white and Eataly and Aikens shallots; everyone but Eataly also adds garlic. All of these are fine choices, but the slightly vinous, sweet flavour of the shallots seems to have an affinity with the seafood. In any case, garlic is rarely a bad idea.

Poole and The River Cafe also add tomatoes. Despite my initial commitment to keeping things as simple as possible, I am won over: they supply a fruity acidity that complements the wine and is less strident than Aikens’s lemon juice. I also fall, unexpectedly, for their dried red chilli – after all, Venice was on the ancient spice route, albeit long before chillies made it to the old world. Perhaps more historically accurate is Poole’s star anise, but my testers found it too strong – it is complex and interesting, but a bit distracting.

Poole’s recipe includes fennel and celery, too, which are nice additions without being essential to the success of the dish. The same goes for Aikens’s thyme and bay leaf, although I like his lemon zest, which I will be using to finish the dish.

To finish

Traditionally, risotto is finished with a big lump of butter and some grated cheese, but The River Cafe reckons that, “if you have plenty of the rich, creamy ink, butter is not necessary”. Aikens seems to agree, using creme fraiche instead (but then he has cooked the rice in 75g of the stuff already), while Poole adds “slightly less than usual, as the squid ink is rich”, which is still almost twice as much as The Silver Spoon suggests. While I am not often inclined to turn down butter, in this case, looking at the colours of all the risottos I have produced, I am going to substitute extra ink – and quite a lot of it, too.

The dish needs nothing more, but Poole’s gremolata – more commonly associated with osso buco – works so well that I was forced to make more to cater for my greedy testers. If the idea offends you, feel free to skip it, but this garlic-free version adds a zesty, peppery freshness that proves the perfect counterpart to the rice.

The method

Most risotto nero recipes follow the same method as any other risotto, with the notable exception of The Silver Spoon’s, which adds the stock in one go and leaves it to do its own thing, with decent, if distinctly less creamy, results. The difference comes in when they add the seafood: The Silver Spoon braises it for 20 minutes in wine and water before adding the rice; The River Cafe adds it just before the rice; and Poole and Aikens pop it in at the end of cooking, with Poole sautéing it first. This is why it is important to use small squid or cuttlefish – after 25 minutes of slow simmering, they will be just tender, with enough texture not to be lost in the rice, and will have given up their delicious flavour in the process.

Perfect risotto nero

Serves two as a main course, four as a starter

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 banana shallot, 2 round ones or ½ white onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
400g baby squid or cuttlefish, cleaned (reserve any ink if you are buying them fresh), tentacles separated, bodies chopped into small rings
1l fish stock
175g risotto rice, preferably vialone nano, but carnaroli will work
75ml dry white wine
2 medium tomatoes, fresh or tinned, chopped
3 sachets of cuttlefish ink
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat the oil and butter in a wide, fairly high-sided pan over a medium heat. Cook the shallots until soft, but not brown, then stir in the garlic and chilli flakes, if using, and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, put the stock in a second pan and bring to a slow simmer.

Add the seafood to the shallot pan and stir to combine, then add the rice and season. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to coat with the fat, until the edges of the grains of rice begin to turn translucent.

Turn up the heat slightly, then add the wine and tomatoes. Cook, stirring, until most of the liquid has been absorbed, then stir in one of the sachets of ink. When this is evenly distributed in the rice, begin stirring in the hot stock, a ladleful at a time, waiting until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid before adding more, and stirring regularly. How long this will take depends on how al dente or otherwise you like your rice, but reckon on 20 to 26 minutes.

When the rice is nearly done, stir in as much of the remaining ink as you need to give the dish colour, then season to taste. Combine the lemon zest and parsley and sprinkle over the top to serve.

A Forgotten Taste of Europe

In America, talk of Jewish cuisine typically refers to all things Ashkenazi: the stuffed cabbage, rugelach, potato latkes, and other dishes of central and Eastern Europe that Jewish immigrants brought with them to this country. The conversation too often mutes the importance of Sephardic and Mizrahi cuisines—although that is beginning to change. At the same time, it also tends to present Ashkenazi cuisine as monolithic, blurring the regional ingredients, recipes, and cooking styles that made Jewish cooking in, say, Lithuania or Poland distinct from Jewish cooking in Hungary or Romania.

Enter The German-Jewish Cookbook. Published this month by Brandeis University Press, the authors—mother-daughter team Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman—lead readers on a historical and gastronomic exploration of a country’s unique contributions to the Jewish table.

The book’s introduction makes the authors’ intentions perfectly clear: “We wrote this book to preserve and document the cuisine of a nearly vanished culture.” And traditional German Jewish food is precisely that, nearly vanished. There is an extant Jewish food culture in Germany today, but it is shaped by the Israelis and Eastern European Jews who settled there in the decades after WWII. What’s gone are, as the book puts it, the vibrant “traditions of a culture that existed in Germany (and Austria) for hundreds of years—up until the Nazi era eradicated it.”

The idea for the cookbook originally came from Sonya, who grew up in Boston hearing her family’s stories about Germany and eating traditional dishes. At first, Gaby—who was born in Bramberg, Germany, in 1938 and immigrated to the United States with her parents a year later—resisted. Both Sonya and Gaby are visual artists, not chefs or researchers, which made the task seem daunting. But Sonya persisted and, over time, Gaby said she realized this was a story they were uniquely suited to tell.

Other cookbook authors have tackled regional Jewish cuisines. Tablet columnist Joan Nathan’s Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France, is one standout example. But it is rare to find a regional contemporary cookbook written by two people with such close familial knowledge of the subject. The German-Jewish Cookbook is, of course, a story of the holiday and everyday foods of the Jews of Germany. But it is also a story of immigration and resettling, particularly to Washington Heights, the upper Manhattan neighborhood where Gaby’s family settled. For much of the early and mid 20th-century, Washington Heights was a hub for nearly 20,000 German Jews. Gaby’s memories—of Washington Heights’ sloping streets and Hudson River views, of the kosher bakeries, butcher shops, and greengrocers that lined the streets, and of her family’s rich Shabbat and holiday meals—factor prominently into the book.

The Gropmans began their culinary and historical research with books, particularly Jewish cookbooks published in Germany between 1850 and WWII. Gaby’s grandmother Emma had two prized cookbooks in her collection, a handwritten one and one professionally published at the turn of the 20th century, that provided both inspiration and recipes. From there, Sonya said, the research process evolved organically—a years-long process of reading, cooking, and, on more than one occasion, arguing and making up.

They also interviewed as many people as possible. Firsthand accounts of German Jewish food are hard to come by. As the Gropmans write in the book, many German Jews—particularly those who came to America as children on the kindertransport—“had parents who were killed, or from whom they were separated at a young age.” And those who made it over with their families and memories intact are, at this point, quite advanced in age. Early on, the Gropmans contacted Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the well-known German-Jewish sex therapist and media personality, who has lived in Washington Heights for decades. “But she didn’t grow up with her mom and never learned to cook,” Sonya said.

Two of the standouts from the Gropmans’ interviews include Johanna (Hanna) Zurndorfer and Herta Bloch—women who, like Gaby, immigrated from Germany to New York in the 1930s. Zurndorfer remembered her childhood vividly: everything from the carp and spätzle her mother cooked for Shabbat, to the dairy cow they kept in the yard for milk and the goose that her mother “fattened with pellets of dough.” That goose would produce enough schmaltz to cook with for months. Bloch, meanwhile, was a local celebrity in Washington Heights because she and her husband co-owned the kosher German butcher shop Bloch & Falk. As the book states, “She knew practically everyone in the community because almost everyone came in … to buy their sausages and smoked meat.”

Both of these women, who remained vibrant into their 90s, died within the last two years—before the book could be published. Gaby and Sonya caught their stories and recipes just in time.

When it came to the recipes, there are dishes in The German-Jewish Cookbook that would be familiar to most Ashkenazi cooks: herring salad, coconut macaroons, chicken soup with matzo balls. But many of the dishes are specific to the German Jewish experience. Take berches, also called “water challah.” Like Eastern European egg challah, berches is made from a puffed, tender dough that is braided into a ceremonial loaf. But it contains no eggs and only the pinch of sugar needed to activate the yeast. Instead, the dough is typically enriched with mashed potato. “It looks the same on the outside, but is a completely different bread,” Sonya said.

A small handful of bakeries in Germany still make berches today. “Remarkably, these bakeries, which once baked berches every week for their Jewish customers, apparently never stopped,” the book states. But while the bread is available, its Jewish history and significance is lost on customers.

In a similar case, while visiting a food market in Frankfurt, Gaby and Sonya came across a dried beef sausage that seemed out of place among the overwhelming array of pork sausages. They realized it was a likely remnant of a time when Jewish customers had shopped there. “It wasn’t kosher, and not geared toward a Jewish audience anymore. But it was clear that the butcher shop had just never stopped making it,” Gaby said. They brought one home and used it while making lentil soup with ringwurst, which appears in the book. “It tasted almost identical to the beef sausages I ate growing up in Washington Heights,” said Gaby.

The Gropmans developed the book’s recipes with a contemporary cook in mind, providing sources for harder-to-find ingredients and using modern techniques. But when it came to flavor, they decided to keep the dishes as historically accurate as possible. Knieküchlein or “knee doughnuts” offer one humorous example. The doughnut was prepared for Hanukkah by groups of women who would sit together and stretch balls of yeast dough over their knees before slipping the rounded disks into hot oil. “The first step was always to wash their knees,” they write in the book. In addition to their rustic preparation, the book states that the doughnuts also have an old-fashioned taste, “not too sweet or rich, but satisfying in their fried, doughy goodness.”

The book describes another baked good, haman—which are little cookies shaped like gingerbread men, representing the Purim story’s villain—as having a “bready, not too sweet” flavor that might be less familiar to the modern palate. “People could make them much sweeter, but we followed the older tradition,” Sonya said. Americans today are most familiar with triangular hamataschen from Eastern European. But in Germany, haman cookies were decidedly the most popular Purim treat.

Produce-focused dishes, which tend to get lost in the American concept of Ashkenazi Jewish food, feature prominently in the book: everything from a springy radish salad and chilled sour cherry soup to a kosher version of the traditional German dish kohlrabi in white sauce. “There was more of a vegetable culture present in the old kosher German cookbooks than we expected,” Gaby said. “It was a pleasure to put those dishes into our book.”

In some cases, regional fruits and vegetables shaped German-Jewish dishes in specific ways. There is plenty of crossover with Eastern European cuisine, of course, like the shared love of radishes, stone fruits, and berries. But as Gaby said, “Germans have an obsession with asparagus” that doesn’t as readily apply to Eastern European cuisine. Not surprisingly, then, The German-Jewish Cookbook includes recipes for spring pea and asparagus soup and vegetable vinaigrette that includes the springy spears.

It is hard to overstate the importance of a book like The German-Jewish Cookbook, which the Gropmans hope to have translated into German. It captures a lost moment in time, elevating a rich history and culture that, within a generation, will have almost no one left who experienced it. “When I go back to Germany, Jews don’t exist there anymore,” Gaby said. “The history of the expulsion is there, but what came before is not. This was something we needed to do.”

Labor Day Showdown: Burger vs. Hot Dogs

The greasy sizzle of delicious meat on a grill is a staple of every Labor Day weekend. But as everyone breaks out the barbecue grill, paper plates, and “Kiss the Cook” aprons, a debate older than charcoal briquettes rages in the minds of grillmasters everywhere, along with their hungry audience: Do you want a burger? Or a hot dog? (“Both” is certainly an option, but not for the purposes of this showdown.)

Vegetarian? I’m so sorry.

Competition

Both burgers and hot dogs can be prepared in quite a few ways, whether by grilling, broiling, pan frying, or in the case of hot dogs, boiling. Throw on some toppings like ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese, and you’ve got yourself a delicious, meaty entree that goes perfectly with an ice cold soda or a delicious beer.

Burgers

Your traditional burger is a cooked ground beef patty in between two pieces of bread, like a bun or a roll. Of course, you can gussy it up with various accoutrement, including cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and other delicious toppings and condiments. It’s hard to beat the flavor profile of a fully-equipped burger, but it might be hard to maintain its structural integrity if you’re using only one hand.

Hot Dogs

Hot dogs are as iconic as apple pie and Superman in the fabric of American culture. A hot dog is a cooked sausage served in a partially sliced bun. Condiments like ketchup (however controversial), mustard, and relish are traditional toppings, but cheese, pickles, peppers, and bacon are also excellent additions that will supe up your dog. Sure, it’s not as filling as a burger, but you’re going to have more than one anyway.

Hot Dogs: Engineered to Be a One-Handed Beer Companion

Hot dogs are the more manageable of the two classic barbecue foods. Regional differences mean different types of meat may be involved, though the general shape and composition will be similar. The cylindrical sausage shape and long bun make it ideal for one-handed consumption. They’re a staple at baseball games, where you’ll need a free hand to either hold a pint of beer or catch a foul ball beelining for your face.

Hot dog variations range from the tame to the downright preposterous. Your standard dog is paired with ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. Some of the most unwieldy (but delicious) hot dog options include the chili cheese dog, the Chicago dog, and a Cleveland staple, the Polish Boy. The more elaborate versions may require a hot dog tray to contain the additional toppings.

Burgers: A Two-Handed Helping of Deliciousness

There’s a reason a cartoon show about a burger restaurant exists. They’re great. It’s hard to find something more mouth-watering to consume during a barbecue than a burger. The grilled beef patty, the toasted bun (if you’re doing it right), and the assortment of delicious toppings all add up to a both nutritionally dense and aromatically appealing meal. The origin of the burger as we know it today is disputed, but it was catapulted to the forefront of American culture thanks to its appearance at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Where hot dogs are usually grilled in the same uniform manner, you can alter your burger’s taste depending on how rare you prefer to eat beef.

The actual components of a burger allow for a wide variety of permutations and variants that will appeal to nearly every palate. Bacon cheeseburgers, California burgers, and even Luther burgers (a burger with a sliced donut for a bun) are just a few of the innumerable varieties you can stuff into your gullet.

A burger’s structural integrity is its weakness, and relies on multiple factors. Bun thickness, patty size, and topping thickness all add up to a food that will potentially be too tall to fit in your pie hole, forcing you to compress the burger or take multiple bites, pushing the rest of the meal either out the rear or sides of the bun. Two hands are usually necessary, meaning you’ll probably need to take a seat while you chow down. Also, soggy bun bottoms are the worst.

Verdict: Burgers Rule, but Hot Dogs are The Perfect Barbecue Food

No one can deny the appeal of a delicious burger, no matter your dietary requirements. But in terms of outdoor barbecue fare, its composition is a double-edged sword. Hot dogs are the superior barbecue food thanks to the even delivery of both bread, beef, and condiments, all while using a single hand. You might not think it’s that big a deal, but when you’re walking around the park, beer in one hand, dog in the other, enjoying the beautiful weekend you’ve been waiting for all summer long, the answer will be undeniable. Throw a burger on the grill, for sure, but save a dog or two for me.

Find Delicious Berries Among The Thorns

Late August is not yet autumn, but with the shortening daylight, now less than 14 hours, we are moving in that direction. It is not hard to see these signs of the seasons. Migration of birds is happening more obviously now. Hawk Ridge is open and recording raptors passing by each day. Warbler species grouping into "warbler waves" are moving in the trees now, too. But it is the flight of the nighthawks, often in large flocks that gets our attention of this fall bird movement. Other signs are here too. Crickets, katydids and grasshoppers abound. Their kinds will die in the coming frosts and so they need to mate and lay eggs before the weather gets too cold. With the summer wild flowers done blooming and gone to seed, the fall wild flowers — most notably asters, goldenrods and sunflowers, about a dozen kinds of each — take over the flowering of the roadsides and open areas. Large and diverse, they will catch our attention until the frosts.

Going into the garden, we will see plenty of developed or developing produce. August has been called the time of early harvest and we see it here in the gardens each day. There's always something new. Though not yet ripe, the nearby apple and crab apple trees have their fruits reaching towards maturity. We also see this with the wild plums and hawthorns. I've often found hazel trees, both the American and beaked, loaded with green-husked products. Remembering the site, I returned when they are ripe only to find the local squirrels and bears beat me to this harvest! Acorns will be fully formed a bit later. And there's a plethora of mushrooms out in the woods now, new ones seen each day.
But it is the berry season that has been upon us for the last several weeks and will continue well into next month that many of us take note of.

Starting about a month ago, each woods walk has been made more colorful and delicious with the presence of berries. Berries are small fruits that have formed a covering their seeds. (An exception: strawberry seeds are on the outside.) Often they are very colorful and good tasting to get the attention of passing animals that will pick and eat these berries, thereby dispersing the plants seeds. Though many are edible for us, we are not going to eat lots that I see in the woods. Among these berries that are best left alone are red or white baneberries, blue-bead lily (Clintonia), sarsaparilla, rose twisted-stalk, false Solomon-seal and spikenard (Aralia) — all seen on a single woods walk that I took recently. But also on these forest forays, I located ripe blueberries, raspberries, juneberries and pin cherries. All of these have been ripe for a couple of weeks. Others, newly formed, join this list: choke cherry, gooseberry, currant and highbush cranberry, adding more color and taste to the scene. But during the second half of August, the one that gets me out picking regularly are the blackberries.

Not as common as their close cousins, the raspberries, blackberries are plants more likely to be found in the south part of the Northland. Blackberries are also known as brambles since they form as vine-like spreading shrubs that can develop into a thicket. Stems, called canes, can be six to eight feet long, usually growing in an arching pattern. These branches are filled with numerous sharp thorns that are usually curved. They have been described as being more like that of "fish hooks" than thorns. Anyone wandering into a patch of blackberries had better be ready to get hooked and caught by these thorns. For this reason, my avid picking of blackberries, despite their delicious juicy taste, is usually done alone. I find that whatever the effort and the wounds may be, the result of a collection of these berries makes the prickly picking worth it.

Like raspberries, the fruits of blackberries are formed on growths called drupes. A drupe is defined as a fleshy fruit with seed inside. Some drupes, like plums, have a hard, single seed inside, while others have multiple seeds. These compound drupes are what we find in raspberries and blackberries — many tiny drupes each with a seed inside. Anyone familiar with eating these two kinds of berries is also very familiar with crushing the seeds. With red raspberries, the fleshy fruit detaches from the receptacle when ripe. Blackberries ripen with this receptacle or core still attached to the multiple drupes. We pick the whole fruit to eat. Blackberry season is mostly late summer and I find that due to the thorns, competition to gather them is less than the earlier berries. But I'm not alone. Some bears and birds will devour the large berries and I have noted that a couple of insects — stinkbugs and hornets — also seem to enjoy this treat. They add more to the picking at this time and late August is a delightful time that, with the presence of blackberries, is made delicious as well.