Rice toasting is the first cooking step which is essential for obtaining excellent risotto. This initial phase aims to waterproof the rice grain and keep it compact and whole all the way to the mouth. It’s very short, only 3-5 minutes, on a lively flame but its importance is indisputable. There are various types of toasting, but we only talk about toasting with an animal or vegetable fat to prevent the grains from sticking to each other. Some people use butter to have a tasty and sweet fat to match the rice flavour, but butter is made of low-digestible saturated fats so it’s not very appreciated by today's consumers. Others use extra virgin olive oil to get a lighter risotto and have a higher smoke point, but EVO also brings its herbaceous trait, which is not particularly appreciated in many risotto. Finally there are those who use butter added with a drop of oil basically to raise the smoke point.

A caterer client of mine, who is a great risotto fan, wanted to enhance traditional risotto without neglecting the needs of new lifestyles that are decidedly more interested to healthy food at the table. He asked me about sweet fat like butter and at the same time light as extra virgin olive oil. Knowing the unique characteristics of our goose fat, with a crystalline white colour and extracted by hand from the back of the goose, I suggested to him to toast the risotto with this special ingredient. This is a forgotten fat that combines the rich and sweet taste of an animal fat with the lightness and delicacy of a vegetable oil. If we add to this a higher smoke point than the butter, the toasting becomes a more interesting phase. The low content of saturated fats and the high content of oleic acid (typical of EVO) make the goose fat the perfect fat for the most demanding chefs who do not want to give up the tradition of risotto, but they ask for lighter and more digestible dishes than the original recipe. As you can see, sometimes it takes very little to reinterpret, in a gourmet version, the story of a territory that has mastered the best risotto ever: fresh, light and digestible.

How much guilt in a gourmet dish are we willing to tolerate?

Everyday we are bombed with more or less truthful information about what ends up in our daily diet ... and there is no food that will be saved from this discrimination. Vegetables and fruits treated with chemicals, contaminated dairy products, fish and meats polluted with unnatural substances or animals raised in non-ethical ways.

How much are we willing to put up with? And then above all, what shall we eat and what will we avoid to put an end to unhealthy and ethically wrong food choices? Do not believe that to eliminate some products or entire categories is the only way.

Eating with our head before our mouth is the only solution to this huge problem. Making conscious choices about your diet can help us to bring all food categories on the table without exception, paying attention to ethical and healthy choices.

When we talk about goose liver, gourmet people and high-class international cuisine experts already delight in the sweet flavour of foie gras, which is the millennial ally of the great chefs, but we know it is losing its fame, precisely for its production technique. On the other hand there is Oca Sforzesca company and it is goose liver production: healthy, tasty, rich in iron, light and fragrant which is obtained from animals raised in farms where they wander and feed freely.

With this extraordinary product, we decided to realize our usual Risotto with tastes and perfumes of this season.

There are sounds which are able to recall to our mind some situations, but above all there are flavours and fragrances that we easily associate to a season.

Winter is coming up, the tables in the North of Italy are purple as the leaves of the winter radicchio vegetable. The crackling fire in the fireplace reminds us of the uniqueness of goose smoked salami like our very own Vigevano goose breast.

The meeting and the memory of these flavours with these colours can only inspire us to try a new simple, but tasty risotto in order to welcome the month of December.

​Here's what came to our minds ...

Foggy days of early of November, suitable for putting a new risotto with goose products at the table.
Since the season allows it, we have decided to enrich this preparation with the new goose liver salami by Oca Sforzesca which is made exclusively with healthy raw materials, coming from animals raised outdoors and naturally fed.

The liver sausage is a delicate goose product, which lends itself to savory preparations and original food combinations without overwhelming the flavor of the other products.
To balance this risotto, we have added seasonal ingredients such as turnips, the brandy which, with its rounded sweetness, slightly enhances the taste of the liver and pecorino cheese that make the dish savory.