Food Pairing With Prosecco: Seafood Risotto

Sparkling wine has been holding up the edges of supper since the first bubbles were quaffed in France in the times of Dom Perignon, the monk and legend behind what we now call champagne.  A meal can start with an aperitif of prosecco, champagne or Franciacorta, typically followed by white and red wine of increasing structure and intensity, and finished by an effervescent tipple with dessert.  It is the bookend but not the book, the bread but not the sandwich meat, the opening and closing titles but not the film itself.

Bubbly can be a Lone Ranger, served as a walking libation, for there are few things as satisfying as gliding through a room with a good glass of champagne whilst viewing art, chatting up new conquests, or just watching paint dry on a wall. One does not serve red wine at a function of this sort, as it lacks in gaiety and spriteliness. One never questions what will happen about a few glasses of red wine. Sparkling wine, on the other hand, has spontaneous and rather sensual possibilities tucked up its sleeve.    

Why not insert this ceremony, romance and sheer lightness of being, into the main course itself, letting bubbly take its due at centre stage?  

Inspired and thirsty, I started with what I had in the kitchen – a bottle of Prosecco 52 Brut Valdobbiadene D.O.C. from Santa Margherita and some carnaroli rice, one of the best grains for risotto.  It is far more common in England to use arborio rice for risotto, likely because it is easier to find, yet carnaroli has a slower cooking time and higher starch content, allowing the rice to absorb more liquid and remain softer and smoother. 

A bit of information about the Prosecco in question …

Prosecco 52 Brut Valdobbiadene D.O.C. is a sublime expression of Santa Margherita’s enological prowess. The number 52 has a double meaning, as it refers to the first year that the winery made prosecco in 1952, before the D.O.C. was recognized by the Italian government, as well as number of the best parcels of prosecco grapes selected to make this particular cuvee.

The result is a fresh, young wine dressed in a brilliant straw yellow vest with light green highlights. On the nose it is quite floral and delicately fruity, with notes of acacia, green apple and pineapple. On the palate, the acidity is balanced by a lovely softness and elegance. The bubbly perlage is persistent, and certainly a vehicle for aromatic intensity as well as minerality.

With risotto in mind, I had the task of finding something suitable to pair with this fine example of Prosecco Valdobbiadene.  Most risotto recipes are too heavy to be paired with Italy’s most famous sparkling export.  The rice dish comes from the mountaneous north, where winters are long and the traditional cuisine emphasizes fatty meats and warming sauces.  We have the south to thank, in the form of seafood risotto, a ruling dish from Rome down to Sicily, its coastal towns brimming with excellent shellfish.

In London, thankfully there is Waitrose for the procurement of shellfish.  For those not living next to a fresh fish market (that makes 95% of us), they are fully stocked with all the mussels, clams, squid and prawns you will need for this dish.  I would recommend that one resist the temptation to cheat and buy cooked shrimp.  They do a great job of advertising it at the seafood counter, and you can choose it shelled or whole, but there is a lot to be said for buying it fresh.

The variety in a seafood risotto pairs well with this Prosecco, as does the rice itself.  Its prawns bring out the delicate sweetness of the Brut, for example.  Even though this wine appears rather dry on the palate, as do most Bruts, the category allows for up to fifteen grams of sugar per liter.  The mussels bring a briny minerality balanced by the prosecco’s softness.  As for the carnaroli rice, its starchiness is cut by an appley, acidic bite, bringing harmony to the dish.

Rice and Gold

 

Risotto alla Milanese. Risotto allo zafferano. Risotto al Nero di Seppia. These succulent and savory rice dishes of northern Italy satiate the palate and define the region’s cuisine. Their very ingredients define the region’s agricultural and maritime history, and point to a rich commercial and cultural exchange with the Far East. So just how did a pasta-loving country become Europe’s biggest producer of rice, a foodstuff from China?

There was a time when this nutrient-rich grain turned up on farmacy counters rather than dinner tables. Its medicinal properties have long been touted for many uses and cures, including cosmetic treatments for skin hydration and emmolience in Asia.

The Venetians, a folk known for embracing foreign cultures, adopted this grain in the kitchen, absorbing rice as their own. With an openness this maritime city exhibited in the face of new and foreign customs and foodstuffs, from spices to the concept of sweet and sour they did not discriminate in terms of good culinary taste, regardless of the ingredient’s origin.

Lombardia, however, is where our Italian rice story starts. It all began in the fourteenth and fifteenth century in the provinces of Vercelli. Cavour created Europe’s most modern irrigation systems, helping rice to really take off in the region, and by consequence, country. The canal which bears his name, Canale Cavour, winds from the Po in Chivasso into the Canton Ticino in Switzerland. The deviation of freshwater used to soak these northern Italian rice paddies gave birth to a rice cultivation that continues to supply the grain to the rest of the continent to this day.

Risotto allo Salto is a delectable example of this grain’s preciousness in the annals of northern Italian cooking. It was a dish savored exclusively by nobility, who would dine on the saffron-scented creation at Milan’s reknowned Scala.

 

Between the first and second acts of the opera, on small ovens in backstage dressing rooms, their servants would cook this mid-performance snack, ready for their ‘salto’, or intermission. A bit of home for the weary aristocracy when out about in their best frocks, its warmth and intensity coated them in a comfortable carbohydrate-rich meal not unlike 1980s ‘TV dinners’ were to Americans, taken to a whole new level of sophistication.

The mixture of salty and sweet is exemplified in Risotto al Melone. This luscious dish combines the musty, soft sweetness of melon and the dense, creamy texture of risotto finished in butter and Grana Padano cheese (not unlike a good, aged Parmesan cheese), and creates a perfect marriage. Some melon is kept apart from the risotto and left to boil in a water that will be added to the risotto, bit by bit, along with vegetable broth, adding more melon depth to the dish.

According to ancient Chinese legend, a feudal lord moved by the sight of his starving serfs, asked his farmers to irrigate his fields with water from the nearby river. He then put his own teeth into the water. Millions of rice plants grew, feeding his people and putting and end to their hunger and suffering. The legend associates rice with abundance, with the lord’s teeth serving as symbols of seeds of future happiness, peace and prosperity.

 

This Asian superstition, as it were, was brought to Italy and is now incorporated in the throwing of rice at weddings. The gesture is a benediction and a communion, for the couple, that they never be in lack, neither literally nor figuratively.