From Big Night · 1996 · Reconstructed
Pesto Risotto
Serve when
The green one, set down beside the plain and the seafood — the tricolor of the big night's risotto course.
In the movie
Theatrical
- 01:17:24 At the feast for Louis Prima, a guest is presented with three risottos at once — 'This is the pesto. This is regular risotto. And this is seafood risotto' — the green, white, and red of the Italian flag on one table
By the time the big feast is under way, Primo isn't serving a single dish — he's serving a flag. A guest gets all three risottos set down together, plain, seafood, and this one, green with basil, and the room barely has time to register the joke before the timpano steals the rest of the night. It's a reconstruction: the film names the three risottos in passing dialogue but never publishes quantities, so this rebuilds the green one from a standard basil pesto folded through a basic risotto base.
Ingredients
- For the pesto:
Method
- Make the pesto first: blend the basil, pine nuts, garlic, and a pinch of salt, streaming in the olive oil until smooth, then fold in the parmesan by hand so it doesn't turn gritty in the blender. Set aside.
- Bring the stock to a bare simmer and keep it there.
- Warm the olive oil and butter in a wide pan and sweat the onion until soft, with no color.
- Add the rice and toast it a minute or two, stirring, until the edges turn glassy.
- Pour in the wine and let it cook away almost completely.
- Add the hot stock a ladle at a time, stirring and waiting for each addition to absorb before the next — about 18 minutes.
- When the rice is creamy with a bite left at the center, take it off the heat and stir in the pesto — off the heat only, so the basil stays vivid and doesn't dull to green-gray.
- Plate it beside its plain and seafood cousins, and let the color do the talking.
Beyond the recipe
Watch & shop
As an Amazon Associate, FlixNFood earns from qualifying purchases.