The Risotto Lesson

Tuscany wasn’t meant to smell like this. It was supposed to be rolling vineyards, olives, and sunlight soft as honey. Instead, I opened a back door and was hit by garlic, onions, and steam thick enough to scald the hair off a donkey. Pots rattled, knives slapped boards, and a fan groaned like it had given up hope. Olive oil hung in the air, clinging to tiles tattooed with tomato splatter. Out front, an espresso cup rattled into its saucer as a waiter barked “Pronto!”

I was eighteen, on holiday in Tuscany, and somehow already in over my head. This wasn’t rest. This was risotto.

My plan had been simple: vineyard, wine, maybe hum Volare. But my head chef back home insisted otherwise.“Jon, you must see my friend Giovanni. He makes the best risotto in Italy. He’ll teach you.”

A risotto lesson. On holiday. Just what every exhausted apprentice needs: homework abroad.

Giovanni appeared like he’d been rolled downhill: barrel-bodied, cheeks crimson, moustache curled so theatrically it deserved billing.“Ahhh, Jon! Grazie! You are ready to tango with the fire, eh? The stove—she is a jealous lover. Ignore her one second, she kills you!”That was Giovanni: three lines in and already an aria. I wasn’t in a kitchen. I was trapped in a one-man opera, and I didn’t know the score.

He thrust a mountain of garlic at me.“The garlic—she is the perfume of life! Slice her thin, like you shave the cheek of an angel. Soft, soft—no rush!”A romantic food writer might have called the cloves “pearled fragments of winter sunlight, sticky with their own perfume.”I called them “unpeelable little sods clinging on like tax inspectors.” I hacked with all the elegance of a chimp dismantling flat-pack furniture, skins sticking to my fingers like unpaid bills, nails reeking of sweetness soap could never wash away.

Crates of San Marzanos sweated in the heat, the smell of sun and soil still clinging to their skins. Rosemary dangled from a hook, perfuming the room like the hillside outside. Giovanni kissed tomatoes, muttered at basil, and generally behaved as though La Traviata had broken out in the produce aisle.

Here’s the thing: pasta says boil me, eggs say fry me. Risotto? Risotto says earn my trust. It’s not dinner, it’s a love affair — slow, needy, occasionally sulky. You don’t cook risotto, you romance it. Whisper, coax, never look away, and pray it doesn’t leave you for someone with more patience.

Giovanni splashed in the wine and WHOOSH—the pan hissed like a stadium crowd. Steam blasted upward, frizzing my fringe and fogging my glasses, a hot cloud of vineyard perfume that left me looking like I’d wandered into a Whitesnake video circa 1987.“Dis-a Tuscan white, eh Jon? Smells very nice!”“Yes, shall I—?”“NO! You don’t drink! The risotto feels abandoned!”What is this, cooking or childcare? Feed me, burp me, don’t you dare look away.

“Now you add the stock.”I tipped too much.“NOOO! One ladle ONLY!” Giovanni bellowed, as if I’d baptised the rice in crude oil.I tried again. One ladle. The broth hit the pan and bloomed: roasted bones, sweet carrot, grassiness of celery. Steam rolled over me, clinging with the metallic tang of iron and onion.

Pecorino rinds had been slipped into the stock, a farmer’s trick from the hills. Beneath it, the mineral tang of Tuscan well water clung to every ladle.Then I stirred—too vigorously. Giovanni gasped like I’d defiled his grandmother and the soup.“No, no, no! You stir like you love the rice. Slower! Tender, eh? Like you dance with a beautiful woman.”He demonstrated, hips rolling in a slow-motion thrust so obscene it could have aired after midnight. My wrist already ached, a dull burn creeping up to my shoulder. Still—one ladle at a time. The rice demanded patience the way an infant demands sleep.

Finally came the mantecatura: butter and Parmesan, folded in with reverence. Giovanni closed his eyes.“Now we make-a love to the risotto.”I was fairly certain we’d strayed into ritual sacrifice. Possibly to Dionysus.

Then Giovanni took a spoon, swooped into the molten risotto, and blew across it with exaggerated ceremony. His breath was an aria of garlic with a bass note of camel’s backside. “Open-a your mouth,” he commanded.I obeyed. He fed me the spoonful like a priest delivering communion.

I chewed slowly. It was obscene. Creamy satin laced with butter, Parmesan humming low and salty. Each grain gave a tiny, teasing resistance before it surrendered completely. I closed my eyes, shamelessly undone. Worth every second — though not, perhaps, worth the tendonitis.“Eh, you like-a de risotto, Jon?”“Yes, I do.”He slapped me, booming like a tenor hitting his final note:“From today, you never make-a it any other way!”

We staggered out with wine, onto rickety chairs that wobbled like pensioners on scooters. The Tuscan sun slapped the walls gold, heat shimmering off the cobbles like stage lights. Scooters buzzed and farted their way down the lane, a Fiat Panda honked twice, theatrically, as though even the cars wanted their lines heard.

A nonna leaned from a green-shuttered window to scold children booting a football, her voice echoing like a mezzo-soprano’s warm-up. Laundry flapped above our heads — shirts, sheets, underwear billowing like banners in some medieval parade. Even the pigeons seemed choreographed, their wings clapping in time with the clatter of crockery from the trattoria next door.

The air was thick with diesel and rosemary, espresso and grapes turning soft on the vine. Tuscany never whispers. It performs. And the trick is, you know it’s a cliché, and you don’t care. Because clichés are only clichés until you’re drunk enough not to mind.

Behind us, the kitchen still rattled — pots clanging, water boiling over, a radio buzzing static opera. Giovanni waved it off with a flick of his hand, as if he’d orchestrated the whole show.

I looked down at my garlic-stained hands, wrist twitching from the stir. My shirt clung with sweat, wine sloshed precariously as the chair wobbled beneath me. Tuscany was beautiful, yes. But it never let you off easy.

I came for rest and wine. I left with garlic breath, tendonitis, and a spiritual bond with Arborio. But also this: somewhere between the shouting, the broth-scented steam, and Giovanni’s pelvic sermon, I found something useful. Not just how to make risotto. How to take life one ladle at a time — steam in your face, sweat down your back, wrist aching, but still stirring, still coaxing, until at last, it comes together.