Two new North Asheville restaurants reveal their secrets for really good risotto.

story and photos by Naomi Johnson

Oh, risotto! The chef’s tour de force, the home cook’s bane. So tricky, so laborious! And also somehow, mysterious. This seemingly humble dish—in essence just rice in a creamy sauce—always seems surrounded by some Italian alchemy so arcane it can’t even be described in English. Soffritto, tostatura, mantecare! Only its native tongue can articulate the many-layered mystery that is risotto.

The first lesson in my quest to understand this perfect winter comfort food proved to be linguistic. It all starts with the soffrito, the dish’s aromatic base, traditionally onions sauteéd in butter. I got to be a spectator to this operation at HomeGrown, which opened last fall on Asheville’s Merrimon Avenue. One of its chefs, Ja Wall, goes way back with this dish. “My neighbor’s 90-year-old Italian grandmother taught me to cook risotto when I was 12 years old,” he says.

After that, there’s the tostatura, adding uncooked rice to the pan, coating it in fat and heating until it reaches a stage called nacre. “It gets translucent with what looks like a little eyeball in there,” says Wall, in an unforgettable (and quite unappetizing) image. From there, add hot stock little by little, stirring constantly to bring the starch out of the rice—it’s the starch that provides the dish’s characteristic creaminess. The key, according to Wall? You must to use the right kind of rice. HomeGrown uses Arborio; if you try to make it with regular long-grain, you’ll wind up with mush.

HomeGrown, opened by owners Greg and Miki Kilpatrick with a heavy emphasis on local food and local farms, always has a risotto on the menu. Chef Wall tries seasonal variations featuring local ingredients, in keeping with the restaurant’s philosophy: making “top-quality food that’s within everybody’s reach,” according to co-owner Miki Kilpatrick. This fall, the risotto is made with roasted local butternut squash and pumpkin, along with Romano cheese from Ashe County Cheeses.

For phase two of my risotto education, I headed down the road to Plant, which opened on Merrimon Avenue last summer and recently had a celebrity guest stop by when rocker Moby was in town for Moogfest. I followed chef Jason Sellers through the mantecare. Traditionally, after the stock is all absorbed, mantecare is when you beat in butter and cheese.

In Plant’s case, because they’re dedicated to serving an entirely plant-based menu, they use vegetable stock and make the soffrito with olive oil. They have to bring a lot of creativity to the mantecatura department, and this case, they produced delicious results. Right now, Plant is using a pureé of pumpkin and cashews for this step, creaming the entire dish over heat; you know it’s ready when it achieves a consistency called all’onda, or “to the wave.” At home, when you tilt the pan, the mixture should not pour, but rather will wrinkle up in a wave-like shape. Plant’s risotto of the moment is cooked with diced leeks and butternut squash and topped with an array of locally-foraged exotic mushrooms.

Both chefs agree: risotto need not be difficult. By following a few key guidelines, it’s well within the reach of any home cook. They also both emphasize that it’s suited to practically infinite variation, even down to replacing the rice with other grains. Sellers has made it with quinoa, brown rice and—the big hit of the summer at Plant—roasted corn with green chile. And of course, if you don’t want to tackle all that stirring, and new vocabulary, yourself, they’ll be happy to make it for you.

For more on Plant, check out www.plantisfood.com. For more on HomeGrown, go to www.slowfoodrightquick.com.