Risotto alla Milanese

Risotto alla Milanese is a saffron-colored risotto associated with the city of Milan, made by slowly cooking short-grain rice in stock, wine and butter, stirred constantly so the rice releases its starch into a creamy sauce, and finished with saffron threads that give the dish its golden color and characteristic aroma. It depends on short-grain rice varieties such as arborio and carnaroli, grown in the Po Valley of northern Italy since rice cultivation spread there in the fifteenth century, after arriving in Europe through Arab and later Spanish and Sicilian intermediaries. A popular legend credits the dish's saffron coloring to an apprentice glassmaker nicknamed Zafferano who was working on the stained glass windows of Milan's cathedral, was teased for tinting everything with saffron pigment, and, as a joke, was said to have stirred a pinch of it into the rice at a wedding feast in 1574; the story is told and retold in Milanese food writing as a charming origin tale rather than as documented history.