Name: Risotto al Nero di Seppia
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 600 g cuttlefish or squid, cleaned, ink sacs reserved, or 4 sachets of ink; 300 g carnaroli rice; 1 onion, very finely chopped; 5 tbsp olive oil; 4 garlic cloves, crushed; 150 ml dry white wine; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 1 litre fish stock, hot; 1 ¼ tsp fine sea salt; ¼ tsp chilli flakes; 3 tbsp olive oil; 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped; 1 lemon, cut into wedges

Risotto al Nero di Seppia

Rice blackened with cuttlefish ink, the cuttlefish itself cooked into it. Venice, and it should be genuinely black rather than grey.

1 hr 10 min total Serves 4 servings Medium

What Goes With It

A glass of Soave
Grilled bread
Lemon wedges

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Ciabatta, Focaccia di Recco, Garlic Bread.

Risotto al Nero di Seppia, in preparation
Photograph credit: Risotto al nero di seppia con brunoise di zucchine croccanti by Micaiena · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr

How to Cook Risotto al Nero di Seppia

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Cut the cuttlefish into 1 cm strips. Keep the ink sacs whole in a small bowl, or open the sachets.
Soften the onion in 5 tbsp oil for 8 minutes, then add the garlic and cook 1 minute.
Add the cuttlefish and cook 5 minutes over high heat, then the tomato purée for 2 minutes.
Add the rice and toast it 2 minutes, then the wine, stirring until absorbed.
Stir in three-quarters of the ink, then add the hot stock a ladleful at a time for 16 minutes, stirring, until the rice is al dente.
Add the salt, chilli and the last of the ink and cook 2 minutes more — this final addition is what keeps it black rather than grey.
Off the heat, beat in the 3 tbsp olive oil hard for a minute. No butter and no cheese. Serve with parsley and lemon.

Related guide: Choosing rice.

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A Few Notes

Ink in two stages. The last spoonful is the colour.

No cheese with fish. Olive oil does the mantecatura.

Cuttlefish is either two minutes or forty. Aim for the short end.

Ingredient Swaps

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

Leftovers

Best immediately. It does not reheat or freeze well.