Parmesan & White Wine Risotto

I’ll just come right out and say it. Wine and butter make for the best building blocks of a meal, and it is a damn shame that I don’t care for mussels because otherwise I KNOW that they would be all I eat.

In the meantime, when I am looking for a soupy, but not soup, dish with infinite depth and richness, I lean in hard to risotto with parmesan and white wine. I love the idea of a fussy-to-make dish that is very elemental in the ingredient list — arborio rice, wine, butter, shallots, chicken stock, parmesan, perhaps some peas or lemon or garlic if you’re felling frisky, but not required.

Standing over the stove and cooking down risotto is pretty laborious, but I love the way it develops as you go through the stages of adding broth cup by cup, and you watch the liquid go from stringent, bubbling white wine to a rich, velvet stock that gently coats each grain of rice.

Then the most satisfying part: you stir in the parmesan and the whole dish comes together in a slick, decadent cloud of flavor and texture. The twenty minutes of stirring (enjoying some leftover wine helps move things along in this stage) are worth the experience of sitting over a lovely bowl of risotto on a rainy evening, knowing that each fold of wine, cheese, and butter has been churned in with love.