Here’s how to make butternut squash and kale ferrotto as easily as an Italian chef.

I can’t say for sure who invented farrotto, in which grainy farro is cooked risotto-style, but I can say that I worked for a chef who Maybe Invented it and certainly popularized it. That chef is Cesare Casella, one of the United States’ foremost experts on Italian cuisine, and Tuscan cooking in particular, and when I was his sous chef at his old restaurant, Beppe, in New York City. Ferrotto was always on the menu.

Cesare was one of the original proponents of this technique while running his family’s restaurant Vapore in Lucca, Italy, and then when he moved to America, he helped create a popular dish here. In Beppe, ferrotto was almost always vegetarian and often changed with the seasons, sometimes made with fava beans and pea puree, sometimes tomatoes and eggplant, and often, in the winter, with butternut squash. His butternut squash version is his most signature of them all, though it changes from time to time. I know she sometimes crumbled amaretti cookies on top, but I especially loved the song with Tuscan kale (aka black kale and dinosaur kale), which I’ve recreated here from memory.

It’s easy, it’s filling, it’s nutritious and satisfying, and it’s delicious. I love the simplicity of the dish — it requires relatively few ingredients, and aside from turning on the oven to roast the squash, it’s all in one pan. Farro, which is an ancient type of wheat, may take a little longer to cook than risotto rice, although it is difficult to shorten the cooking time because different brands of farro cook at different rates. I recommend buying pearled farro, which has some of the bran removed for faster cooking, although I’ve had different brands take different cooking times.

No problem, just keep stirring your liquid until it’s there. A note: farro doesn’t release starch like rice, so it won’t be as creamy on its own, but between the butternut squash, which breaks down into a partial puree in the pan, and the cheese (and some good stirring), it ends up being creamy. will be done

Oh yeah, and about that creaminess: the art of all preparations like risotto comes down to controlling the viscosity. You don’t want it to be loose and watery, but you do want to keep it thinner than you can imagine, because farroto absorbs water and thickens as it sits and cools, so you always have time. are running against and are very thick. And hard porridge. Keep it creamy but flowing until it hits the (hot!) plates, and you’ll be good to go. Remember, it should spread and flow slightly on the plate and not sit in a heap like a hill.

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