Riso alla pilota (Pilot’s Rice)

Frank8 December 2018Lombardia, primi piatti, Risotto and Other Rice Dishes52 Comments

A rustic rice dish from Mantova in the cucina povera tradition, riso alla pilota is named after the piloti or laborers who operating the pila, the mill where rice would be hulled and polished back in the day. (There are still some old pile you can visit today, like this one.) The Po Valley in Northern Italy has been a center of rice production since the late 15th century and, as we well know, risotto and other rice dishes are a staple of the cuisine of Piemonte, Lombardy and the Veneto.

Even if it’s sometimes called risotto alla pilota, the recipe calls for a two-step method for cooking the rice quite distinct from the classic risotto method. You first parboil the rice, then take it off heat and cover it tightly, letting the rice steam. Once the rice is cooked, you fold in grated cheese and crumbled sausage meat—traditionally from Mantova’s salamella sausage—sautéed in butter. The story goes that this hands off method for cooking the rice suited the busy piloti, who couldn’t spare the time away from the pila to stand and stir the rice to make a proper risotto.

A simple dish yes, and not a particularly pretty one. But when done right, a riso alla pilota is full of flavor and immensely satisfying, like so much traditional cooking in the cucina povera style.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

500g (1 lb) vialone nano or Carnaroli rice (see Notes)
250-500g (.5-1 lb) crumbled sausage meat
100g (3.5 oz) butter
50-75g (2-2.5 oz) grated Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese
Salt

Optional:

1 clove garlic, peeled and slightly crushed

Directions

In a large, heavy saucepan or Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid, bring a bit over 1 liter (4 cups) and a bit of salted water to a boil. Add the rice in one mound in the middle of the pot. The tip of the mound should peak just above the water. Add or ladle away water as needed.

When the water comes back to the boil, shake the pan to break up the rice. Parboil the rice, uncovered, for 10-12 minutes, by which time the rice should have absorbed the water almost entirely. Turn off the heat and cover the pot with the lid, covered in a dish cloth. Let the rice steam for another 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, sauté the sausage meat in the butter (and garlic clove if using) until just lightly browned. Turn off the heat (and remove the garlic if you’ve used it) and set aside until needed.

When the rice is done, uncover the pot and break the rice up with a spatula or wooden spoon. Pour over the sausage and butter, together with the grated cheese. Mix well and serve immediately, with more grated cheese on the side for those who want it.

Notes on Riso alla pilota

Simple as it is, the recipe isn’t without its pitfalls, the trickiest part being the cooking of the rice. The rice needs to wind up fully cooked but firm to the bite, with the grains quite separate but just a bit sticky, in a kind of dry risotto.

For this, you need the right amount of water and the right technique. The traditional way of judging the water is to pile all the rice in the middle of the pot of simmering water. If the tip of the rice peaks just above the water, the amount should be about right. That old time method obviously doesn’t factor in the width of your pot, so I’ve provided actual measurements in the recipe as a reliable rule of thumb.

As for the technique, you’ll need to boil the rice at a pace that is neither too fast—so the water doesn’t boil off before the rice done—nor too slow, so the rice doesn’t turn out mushy or overly sticky. The water should be lively but not violent. After about 10-12 minutes almost (but not quite) all of it should have evaporated. Adjust the flame if you need to. And if you misjudge and find the rice drying out too soon, you can always “cheat” and add a few drops of water.

Traditionally, riso alla pilota was prepared in a heavy copper pot. If you don’t have a copper pot, I wouldn’t worry too much. The pot should be heavy, however, so it retains its heat off flame for that second step of steaming the rice. An enameled cast iron Dutch oven, for example, would do the job. Covering the lid with a dish cloth ensures a tight seal, and the cloth absorbs any excess moisture.

Tips on choosing your ingredients

The sausage for making a classic riso alla pilota is Mantova’s famous salamella sausage. Salamella is made with a mix of pork belly and shoulder, seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper. As far as I can figure out, salamella not available in the US, although readers in the EU can find it online. The rest of us will have to make do with mild pork sausages, preferably one without fennel seeds. (NB: There is a spicy cured sausage from Naples by the same name, not suitable for this dish.) And if you have the time, you could also make a so-called pistume or pesto mantovano: take chopped pork, season it generously with salt, pepper and minced garlic, and let it marinate overnight. It’s the use of this mince that’s original to the recipe, replaced later by sausage for convenience, although in its native land you can buy pre-made pistume commercially.

The tradition rice for making riso alla pilota is vialone Nano, a variety produced in the provinces of Mantova (Lombardy) and Verona (Veneto). The Mantova-based Campanini brand is widely available here in the US in specialty shops and also online. Of the three rice varieties used for risotto, vialone Nano might be the least known, but it’s my personal favorite. It provides the creaminess you need for a proper risotto, but is never sticky in the way Arborio can be. The grains retaining their individual character, with firm and satisfying texture. If you can’t find vialone Nano, then a good Carnaroli or, in a pinch, Arborio will do. Truth be told, although it might arguably no longer be a true riso alla pilota, it’s hard to go too far wrong with any kind of rice if you dress it with crumbled sausage and copious amounts of grated cheese and butter…

Variations

The amounts of cheese and sausage used in making riso alla pilota vary wildly from recipe to recipe, even more than the range I’ve given in the ingredients list. I suppose back in the day you used as much of these ingredients you could afford on any particular day. And I doubt anyone actually measured the butter, although it’s important to be generous with it. Otherwise, the rice will turn out insipid.

The optional garlic is nice if you’re using sausage that isn’t itself seasoned with garlic like the salamella. Some recipes add a sprig of fresh rosemary to the garlic. I’ve seen some recipes that call for sautéing the sausage in a soffritto of onion. In a few recipes, you add a bit of white wine to the sausage. Some call for a pinch of ground cinnamon or nutmeg.

You can make this into a piatto unico or one-dish meal called riso con puntel by serving the rice with bone-in pork chops grilled or browned in butter arranged in a kind of “crown” with the bones facing out for easy handling. In a variation on a variation, the drippings from the chops can be used to dress the rice instead of the sausage.

Making it ahead

Unlike a traditional risotto, I find that riso alla pilota reheats quite successfully. In fact, it might just taste better. Just add a few drops of water to your pot and stir from time to time over gentle heat.

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