Gabriele Ferron. Photo: risoferron.comGabriele Ferron. Photo: risoferron.com

Masterchef UK judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode could not have been more withering. Gordon Ramsay couldn’t have been more frank or more to the point.

Chef Ferron looked down at my plate, shook his head mournfully and delivered his judgement: “This is not risotto. It is sludge. Mush.” I called it “glop”.

“Value her, she is like a precious pearl,” said the maestro di cucina, holding up a tiny grain to the sunlight.“She’s in the heart of every Italian.”

Rice is in Gabriele Ferron’s blood. He grows and mills his own rice on his Pila Vecchia Antrica Riseria farm in the paddy fields of the Padana Valley, 20 miles south of Verona and an hour-and-a-half west of Venice.

The family farm goes back to 1650 and boasts a collection of ancient rice-harvesting equipment, acting as a living museum for an ancient, rural way of life now under threat.

“It’s still great to prepare and eat risotto rice, but no longer to grow it,” Ferron’s smile turned into a fatalistic shrug.

Italy produces more than 60 per cent of Europe’s rice.

Behind the Far East, the US and Brazil, it remains one of the world’s largest rice producers.

The Italian rice industry produces 1.4 million tons every year and has an annual turnover of over €1 billion. Ancient rice fields cover approximately 240,000 hectares and stretch over the provinces of Vercelli, Pavia Novara, Milan, Ferrara, Oristano, Mantova and Verona.

The industry seasonally employs about 6,000 farmers and 60 rice millers. But the profession is suffering as farmers turn to more commercial alternatives, or give up entirely in the face of free trade and pollution.

Due to imported rice from the US and Thailand, the Haitian and Honduran rice industries have virtually collapsed. The Po Valley and plains of Verona may follow.

Along with the Ferrons, now only five other families work the ancient paddy fields around Isola della Scala – Citta del Riso – the self-proclaimed rice capital of Italy.

Domestic consumption is in danger of being swamped by cheaper imports: quality cannot compete with quantity.

Global warming is not helping either, as La Bassa Veronese wetlands are drying up.

In Ferron’s Restaurant Torre (he is an acclaimed chef as well as an official ‘rice ambassador’) the grissini breadsticks are made from rice flour, as is all the pasta.

Ferron makes rice tiramisù as well as rice ice cream. Cheese is served with rice jam.

Virtually every restaurant in town is a risotteria, offering rice degustaziones. Ferron gives risotto master-classes in stereotypical Italian manner.

“There are different types of rice like there are different types of women. Blonde and brunette, plump like arborio or short like nano; some with perfect bodies, some with real souls!

“You must treat a risotto like a woman. Woo her, spoil her, lavish time on her and she will repay you.”

At the region’s annual month-long autumn risotto festival (Festa del Risotto) and fair (Feira del Riso), more than 300,000 plates are consumed.

On sale is everything from rice biscuits and wafers to rice espresso, rice grappa, rice beer and even rice facial cream and shampoo.

The festival in Isola della Scala (formerly Isola Cenense – ‘the muddy land’) began in 1967, restoring the tradition of working feasts at the end of the summer harvest. Local chefs and farmers meet to discuss and judge their produce and compete for prestigious prizes like the Chicco d’Oro and Spiga d’Oro.

“They are the Oscars of the Italian rice world. Isola is the Hollywood of the rice-growing world,” enthused Siola commune spokesman Alberto Cogo.

Restaurants serve courgette flower risotto and risottos with oranges, red chicory and Gorgonzola and spinach.

Isola is the beginning and end of La strada del riso Vialone Nano Veronese or ‘Rice Road’, which takes in 22 villages such as Butta­pietra, Palu and Nogara.

Woo her, spoil her, lavish time on her and she’ll repay you

The Melotti family is another local rice dynasty.

“Recipes have been handed down through generations. The traditional local one uses sirloin, veal, rosemary and cinnamon,” said Giuseppe Melotti.

“This land was reclaimed by the Etruscans and cultivated by the Romans,” he said.

“Rice is part of our history. Rossini’s opera Tancredi has an aria to rice. But the landscape is changing, physically and economically.

“Until the 1960s, 200,000 female mondine worked the rice fields around Verona. The children of rice workers had their own school. Rice field workers invented their own folk music.”

Travelling the Rice Road is a history lesson. The Romans used rice seeds as medicine. Rice was probably introduced into Italy during the late Middle Ages by Venetian or Genoese merchants as the north – despite the risk of malaria – was perfect with its high temperatures and large water quantities.

In 1839, a Dominican friar brought seeds from the Philippines and the most disease-resistant and productive varieties were discovered. Irrigation and water distribution systems were developed.

Italy’s rice farmers grow short, barrel-shaped rice rather than long grain.

There are four categories based on grain size: comune, semifino, fino and superfine, the type most used for risotto.

Risotto alla Milanese is not dissimilar to Spanish paella.Risotto alla Milanese is not dissimilar to Spanish paella.

Risotto alla Milanese is arguably the most famous Italian rice dish, flavoured with saffron and resembling Spanish paella, perhaps unsurprising as Milan was under Spanish rule for nearly 200 years.

In Piedmont, it is not unusual to find risotto with truffles. In the city of Venice, sautéed eel risotto is a Christmas tradition.

Risotto itself, being similar to pilaf, may have been a Venetian invention or come from the Saracens in southern Italy. In 1574, while working on Verona’s cathedral, the master glassworker who used saffron to colour his paints is said to have added saffron to a rice dish served at a wedding.

The guests pronounced it “risus optimus” (excellent rice), later possibly shortened to risotto.

My private lesson came to an end. The master demonstrated the rice undulating under his gyrating spatula.

“She must be brought to the boil allegro, cared for and looked after at all times, repeatedly toasted with fine wine.”

He adopted a learned, scholarly expression then winked: “She must be constantly tasted. Her flesh must be firm and succulent and never lumpy.”

It was clearly his stock line.

www.fieradelriso.it

www.tourism.verona.it

www.risoferron.com

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