Mantecatura Is the Step Everyone Skips: Seven Rules for Risotto From a Kitchen in Malaga

Risotto is a dish everyone thinks they know, and half of them make it like pilaf with cream. The difference lies in seven steps, none of them expensive, and all of them the opposite of the instinct to hurry.

The list came out of a kitchen in Malaga, where Antonio Banderas hosted actor Dominic Sessa for the film "Tony" - a story about the early years of chef Anthony Bourdain, which premiered in the United States on 7 August. Banderas plays an experienced chef and mentor in the film, and off set he is co-owner of El Pimpi in the old town and of La Pergola. He made the risotto with vegetables, mushrooms and chicken breast.

The seven rules

Arborio or Carnaroli rice - no other variety releases the starch that creates the creaminess. The stock is kept hot throughout; cold liquid stops the simmer and the rice tightens instead of softening. The rice is first toasted with the onion until the grain turns translucent at the edges. The stock goes in gradually, not all at once. It cooks for eighteen to twenty minutes over medium heat. At the end comes the mantecatura - butter and parmesan are beaten in off the heat, vigorously, and that is the step that turns rice with sauce into risotto. And it is served immediately, because risotto waits for nobody.

The best line in the whole story is not about the rice

"I remember coming here with girls when I was sixteen or seventeen," Banderas said of El Pimpi. A man with a Hollywood career who came back to his own city and bought the place he used to go out to as a teenager.

He says openly that he prefers modest restaurants with fresh fish caught nearby to lavish tables. That is a position nobody in the Balkans needs explained. Every village has a place like that, and everyone knows you eat better there than where the menu has photographs.

Risotto is not a Balkan dish, but the principle is familiar - the best food does not require expensive ingredients, it requires someone who is not in a hurry.