Italian Friulian Risotto with Montasio and Friulano Wine | Risotto al Montasio e Friulano
Friuli Venezia Giulia is not risotto country the way Lombardy is, and yet this dish belongs to it completely. The cheese comes from the mountain dairies above, the wine from the hills running east towards the Slovenian border, and the whole plate rests on two Friulian products most cooks outside the region never think to put together.
Montasio is the cheese the region eats every day, a cow milk wheel that changes character completely as it ages. Friulano is the white every osteria pours by the glass. In a risotto they pull in opposite directions in the best way: the cheese brings fat, salt and nutty depth, the wine a hard line of acidity and a bitter almond finish that stops the dish turning heavy after four mouthfuls.
There is almost nothing else in it. No saffron, no cream, no stock cube. The technique carries the plate: a dry toasting of the rice, a full glass of wine driven off completely, a light broth added in stages, and a mantecatura done off the heat. Get those four right and the result is glossy and loose. Get one wrong and you have rice with cheese on it.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: 35 minutes. Total: about 1 hour. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: Friuli Venezia Giulia, from the Carnia dairies to the Collio hills.
The Story
Montasio takes its name from the high limestone plateau in the Julian Alps above Chiusaforte, where cattle were driven to summer pasture for centuries. The cheese was first made by the Benedictine monks of the abbey at Moggio Udinese in the thirteenth century, and by the eighteenth it was traded widely enough that price lists from San Daniele del Friuli quote it by name. It took DOP protection in 1996.
What makes it useful in a kitchen is that it is really four cheeses. At sixty days it is fresco, pale and milky. Between five and ten months it is semistagionato, firmer, with the first savoury notes. Past ten months it is stagionato, hard and properly nutty. Past eighteen it is stravecchio, sharp and crystalline. For a risotto the stagionato wheel melts cleanly without turning rubbery.
Friulano is the other half, and its name is recent even if the grape is not. Until 2007 it was called Tocai Friulano, and it lost that name after a long argument with Hungary over the word Tokaj that ended in the European courts. The grape stayed where it was, in the Collio and the Colli Orientali, giving a dry white with pear, white flower and a bitter almond close.
Ingredients
For the risotto
Carnaroli rice, 1 1/2 cups (320 g)
Friulano white wine, dry, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Yellow onion, very finely diced, 1/2 cup (70 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (30 g), for the soffritto
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
For the broth
Water, 7 cups (1.7 litres)
Yellow onion, halved, 1
Carrot, 1
Celery stalk, 1
Leek, green part only, 1
Bay leaf, 1
Black peppercorns, 6
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
For the mantecatura
Montasio DOP stagionato, aged 12 months, finely grated, 1 1/4 cups (120 g)
Unsalted butter, cold, cubed, 3 tbsp (45 g)
Montasio DOP semistagionato, finely grated, 1/4 cup (25 g)
For finishing
Montasio DOP stagionato, for two thin frico wafers, 1/2 cup (50 g)
Chives, finely sliced, 1 tbsp
Extra virgin olive oil, a few drops per plate
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Preparation
Build a light vegetable broth and keep it hot
Simmer the water with the onion, carrot, celery, leek green, bay leaf, peppercorns and salt for 30 minutes, uncovered, then strain it and hold it at a bare simmer. The broth must stay light, since a dark or heavily salted one competes with the Montasio, and it must stay hot, because cold liquid stops the cooking every time it goes in.
Grate the cheese and separate the two ages
Grate both cheeses fine and keep them in two covered bowls at room temperature, since cold cheese will not emulsify properly. The older wheel carries the flavour, the younger one carries the stretch that gives the risotto its gloss. Weigh them now, because there is no time to grate anything once the rice is in the pan.
Sweat the onion without colouring it
Melt the 2 tablespoons of butter with the olive oil in a wide heavy pan over low heat, add the onion and a pinch of salt, and cook gently for 8 to 10 minutes until soft and translucent. It should take no colour at all: browned onion puts a sweet caramel note into a dish built on nut and mineral flavours.
Toast the rice dry until the grains turn glassy
Raise the heat to medium, add the rice and stir it through the fat for 2 to 3 minutes. Look rather than watching the clock: the grains should turn glassy at the edge with an opaque white core still visible. This tostatura seals each grain so the starch is released slowly over 18 minutes instead of flooding out at once.
Deglaze with the Friulano and drive it off completely
Pour in the wine all at once and keep stirring. It should hiss hard and reduce fast, until the pan is almost dry and no alcohol smell remains, about 2 minutes over medium high heat. Friulano has enough acidity to mark the dish permanently, and a risotto where the wine was not driven off tastes sour rather than bright.
Add the broth in stages at a lively simmer
Add the hot broth a ladle at a time, enough to just cover the rice, and stir steadily rather than constantly. Wait until each addition is nearly absorbed before the next goes in, and keep bubbles breaking across the whole pan. Too gentle a heat gives boiled rice in cheese sauce, because the grains soften before the starch is out.
Test at 16 minutes and stop the rice one minute early
Begin tasting at 16 minutes. Carnaroli usually needs 17 to 18 in all. You want the grain yielding outside with a thread of firm starch at the centre, because the rice keeps cooking through the mantecatura and on the hot plate. On the last ladle add slightly less broth than you think you need.
Rest the pan off the heat before the mantecatura
Pull the pan off the stove and let it stand a full minute without stirring. This is the step most cooks skip and the one that decides whether the cheese emulsifies or splits. Montasio seizes into strings the moment it meets a pan that is still bubbling, so the rice must be hot enough to melt it and no hotter.
Mantecare with cold butter, then the cheese, then wait
Add the cold cubed butter and beat it in hard with a wooden spoon, then the semistagionato, then the stagionato, working each in before the next. If it tightens, add a spoonful of hot broth. Correct the salt, grind in white pepper, cover the pan and wait one more minute: this riposo gives you the wave called all'onda.
Plating
Warm the plates properly. A risotto this loose is finished the moment it hits a cold surface: the butter and the cheese set, the wave stops moving and the whole thing goes from glossy to grainy in front of the person eating it. Shallow wide bowls with a flat base beat deep ones, because they let the rice settle into a thin even layer.
Spoon the risotto into the centre of the plate and knock the base once against the heel of your hand. That single tap spreads the rice into an even circle with a faint wave at the edge. Do not push it into shape with a spoon, which compacts the grains and drives the air out.
Finish with a frico wafer, made by scattering grated stagionato in a thin disc in a dry nonstick pan and lifting it out once it turns lacy and golden. Lean half a wafer against the rice rather than laying it flat. Add a few drops of olive oil, a scatter of chives and a turn of white pepper, and send it out at once.
Professional Technique
The dish turns on the mantecatura, and on the temperature window in which it happens. Montasio stagionato carries roughly 34 percent fat and a protein network that has tightened with age. Beaten into rice still above about 175°F (80°C) that network contracts and squeezes the fat out, which is what people see when a risotto goes stringy with a slick on the surface. Off the heat for a minute the rice drops into the range where the cheese disperses instead.
Using two ages of the same cheese is the second technique. The stagionato gives flavour but has lost much of its elasticity, so on its own it leaves the risotto savoury and dry. The semistagionato keeps the softer casein structure that melts into long smooth strands, which is the body the dish needs.
The third is the handling of the wine. A full 3/4 cup for 1 1/2 cups of rice is a generous deglaze, more than most risotto recipes call for, and it is deliberate. What stays behind once the alcohol has gone is the acidity and the bitter almond phenolics of the grape, and those are the counterweight to 145 grams of cheese and butter. Reduce it less and the dish tastes sour. Skip it and it tastes flat.
Texture and Moisture Control
The target is all'onda, the wave: tip the pan and the risotto should move slowly like thick lava, then settle flat, with no free liquid running ahead and no mound standing still. Almost every fault here is a moisture fault. Too much broth at the end and the rice floats in a thin soup that will never bind. Too little and the starch has nothing to hang in, so the grains clump and the surface goes matte.
Carnaroli holds a high proportion of amylopectin in its outer layers, and steady agitation against a lively simmer is what scrubs it loose into the liquid. The pan must not be left alone and must not be stirred into a paste either: movement every twenty seconds, sweeping the base, is the rhythm. Rice simmered too gently arrives cooked but never creamy.
The final texture is set twice in the last two minutes. The mantecatura loosens the risotto and the rest under a lid tightens it again as the starch reabsorbs liquid. Judge the consistency after that rest, not before, and keep a ladle of hot broth beside the pan to correct it. A risotto tightens between kitchen and table, so send it out one shade looser than you want it eaten.
Professional Mise en Place
A risotto is 18 minutes of continuous work, so everything is weighed, grated and hot before the rice goes into the pan. Nothing here can be prepared the day before except the broth.
Equipment and tools
Wide heavy based pan, about 11 inches (28 cm), with low sides
Second saucepan holding the broth at a bare simmer, with a ladle in it
Flat wooden spoon or a risotto spoon with a hole in the blade
Box grater and two bowls, one per age of cheese
Small nonstick pan for the frico wafers, kept dry
Prepared ahead
Vegetable broth made up to 2 days ahead, strained and refrigerated
Onion diced very fine on the day and kept covered
Both cheeses grated and separated, held at room temperature
Butter cubed and returned to the refrigerator until the mantecatura
Wine measured out beside the stove, never poured straight from the bottle
Service setup
Broth hot and tasted for salt before the first ladle goes in
Plates warming, never cold and never scorching
Timer started the moment the first ladle of broth is added
Frico wafers made before the rice goes in, held on absorbent paper
Chives, olive oil and pepper mill lined up at the pass
Chef Tips
Buy Montasio by the age rather than the name, and taste it in the shop if you can. A twelve month wheel smells of hazelnut and warm butter and breaks with a slight crunch of tyrosine crystals. If all you can find is a young vacuum packed block, use a little more and accept a milder dish, but do not compensate with Parmigiano, which drags the flavour out of Friuli.
Open the Friulano an hour before you cook and pour a glass for yourself. The bottle you deglaze with and the one you drink should be the same, and tasting it first tells you how much acidity is going into the pan. A lean sharp vintage needs a longer reduction, a rounder one can be pulled earlier.
Keep a small ladle of broth back and do not let it go into the rice. Risotto tightens between pan and table faster than most cooks expect, and that reserved spoonful is what lets you correct the wave right before it leaves the kitchen.
To make the plate read as more clearly Friulian, serve a small wedge of frico morbido alongside, the soft Carnia version made with potato and onion. It uses the same wheel of cheese.
Common Mistakes
Adding the cheese while the pan is still on the heat. The most common failure here and an irreversible one. Above roughly 175°F (80°C) the aged casein contracts, the fat separates and the risotto turns stringy with an oily film. Take the pan off the stove, wait a full minute, then beat the cheese in.
Using cold broth. Every ladle of cool liquid drops the pan temperature and stops starch coming out of the grain. The rice then takes far longer than 18 minutes and ends up soft outside while still chalky in the middle. Keep the broth at a bare simmer throughout.
Browning the onion in the soffritto. Colour means caramelised sugar, and a sweet toasted note fights the nutty mineral character of Montasio and the bitter almond of the Friulano. Sweat the onion until translucent, and if it starts to colour, add a spoonful of broth and lower the flame.
Not driving off the wine. Three quarters of a cup of Friulano left half reduced makes a sour risotto that no amount of cheese will balance, because the acidity concentrates rather than disappears. Cook until the pan is visibly almost dry and you can no longer smell alcohol above it.
Holding the finished risotto warm. Held even five minutes it keeps cooking, absorbs the last liquid and sets into a block. Start the rice when the guests are seated and serve it straight out of the pan.
Wine Pairing
Collio Friulano DOC: The obvious answer and the right one, since it is already in the pan. Its pear and white flower fruit sits against the milky sweetness of the Montasio, and the bitter almond note on the finish cuts through the butter and resets the palate between spoonfuls.
Ribolla Gialla Collio DOC: The older Friulian white and the more mineral one, grown on the marl and sandstone the locals call ponca. Higher in acidity than Friulano and far less aromatic, it works as a sharper knife against the fat. Choose a stainless steel version, since skin contact brings tannin.
Lugana DOC: A useful alternative from the southern shore of Lake Garda, made from Turbiana on heavy clay. It has more body and a rounder texture than the Friulian whites, with citrus and a saline close, and that weight lets it sit under the cheese rather than beside it.
Franciacorta DOCG: The sparkling option and a genuinely good one with something this rich. A Brut bottling spends years on the lees and brings a bread crust character that runs alongside the nuttiness of the aged cheese, while bubble and acidity scour fat from the palate.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: For anyone who wants a red with a white risotto, this is the one that works. Alpine Pinot Nero is pale and cool in profile with low tannin, red cherry fruit and a savoury edge that picks up the nuttiness of the cheese. Serve it at 57°F (14°C) or it will bury the plate.
Storage & Reheating
Risotto is made to be eaten immediately and does not store well by design. If you have leftovers, spread them in a thin layer on a cold tray so they cool quickly, then refrigerate in a sealed container for up to 2 days. Left in a warm pan the rice keeps absorbing liquid and sets into a solid cake within twenty minutes.
To reheat, put the cold risotto in a wide pan with 3 to 4 tablespoons of hot broth or water per portion, cover and warm over low heat for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring once or twice. Finish with a knob of cold butter and a little grated Montasio off the heat, which rebuilds some of the emulsion that broke in the refrigerator. Never use a microwave, which turns the edges to paste.
Do not freeze it as risotto. The better use for cold leftovers is small croquettes: mix the rice with an egg, enclose a cube of Montasio in each, roll them in fine breadcrumbs and fry at 340°F (170°C) for 3 to 4 minutes. Shaped croquettes freeze raw for up to 1 month and fry from frozen with 2 minutes added.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 portions:
Calories: 640 kcal
Total Fat: 30 g
Saturated Fat: 18 g
Trans Fat: 0.9 g
Unsaturated Fat: 10 g
Cholesterol: 80 mg
Sodium: 880 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 68 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 3 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 22 g
Lactose: 0.4 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin B12, zinc, selenium
These figures are estimates. Lactose is very low because Montasio aged past ten months has almost none left, and the sodium depends mostly on how hard the broth was salted.
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