A classic saffron risotto - or what in Milan would be called “Risotto alla Milanese” - can be tweaked with extra ingredients: we love to add citrus (lemons in this case).

In the area of Pavia, the “culture of pig” is deep-seated: quand’s gà fam, ghe’l pän e salàm (“when you are hungry, you can have bread and salami”) is still a common saying. In the past, breed a pig meant having a life insurance and when it was killed, once a year, in order to check whether the meat prepared to make salami was good, a little part of it was used to prepare a risotto.