Risotto is the one dish we will not start before you order it. There is no holding it, no reheating it, no shortcut that survives contact with the plate. From the first ladle to the last knob of butter, it is roughly eighteen minutes of undivided attention.
The stirring is the part everyone misjudges. You are not stirring to combine — you are coaxing the starch off the surface of the rice, a little at a time, until the grains suspend themselves in a cream they made rather than one you added. Stir too little and it's soup with rice in it. Stir too much and it's paste.
“You are not stirring to mix. You are stirring to listen.”
Each ladle of stock goes in only once the last has been absorbed, so the rice is always working, never flooded. We keep the stock at a low simmer beside the pan; cold stock would shock the rice and stall the whole thing.
At the end comes the mantecatura — the pan off the heat, cold butter and parmigiano beaten in hard until the risotto turns glossy and loose enough to spread itself across the plate. Then it goes, immediately. A risotto that waits is a risotto that has already started to set.
