By: Adam Gilson
News to Me
I was five minutes from starting a batch of risotto for ten people when my wife, Emma, called me into the kitchen to quietly tell me she was pregnant.
Every part of my body experienced a different emotion. Elation was on my face while my knees tried their best not to buckle, and my heart fought itself like a caged dog.
Movies and television shows give us a template for how we must react to these situations. Wonderful, tearful, hugging with whispers of “I’m gonna be a mommy – I’m gonna be a daddy – we’re gonna be a family.”
But we were at this dinner party surrounded by her parents and some of our closest friends, and I was about to make risotto for ten people and we didn’t even know how far along she was. Emma learned, in her five hours of pregnancy, that social convention dictates we keep this to ourselves till she is at least three months pregnant.
I find out later that 15-20% of known pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, the majority of which occur in the first 20 weeks.
She is mostly likely only four to six weeks along.
So we decide on this night of food and family and friends to keep it to ourselves, to spare others, and each other.
We hug. Hard.
I whisper that I love her. There are no tears from either one of us. Just that feeling when you step into the wrong classroom, look up, and realize your mistake. You try to leave but someone already shut the door so you just sit through the class.
As the sounds of a happy house moved towards the kitchen, we disengaged, and I stared at the heavy cast iron skillet with six tablespoons of butter just beginning to melt.
Risotto, Emma, and the tenuous, abstract speck of human floating around in her are my world now.
The butter is sizzling; time to start cooking
Risotto – Prep
Risotto is a creamy rice dish whose rich, earthy flavors emerge from the dusky rolling hills of northern Italian cuisines. There are two kinds. The shortcut, boxed route à la Rice-a-Roni, that actually isn’t risotto, and the homemade, real risotto.
The ingredients are simple: rice, butter, a diced onion, a splash of white wine, and broth, most likely chicken. The butter and diced onion is the base layer for flavoring.
The key here is the rice. You must use medium grain rice that is high in starch and low in amylose. The creaminess of risotto is derived from the level of starch in the rice–the higher the better. Amylose is a binding polymer in plants that helps retain starch. A high starch low amylose combination allows the rice grains to release as much starch as possible, resulting in a creamier smoother risotto.
But it takes patience. This is why boxed risotto isn’t risotto. Boxed risotto is made in under fifteen minutes because the creaminess and texture isn’t derived from the starch in the rice. It comes from de-hydrolyzed cream included in the spice packet.
It is a lie.
Preparation, I’ve learned, is vital to making proper risotto. Everything must be chopped, diced, sliced, sorted, and heated you before you begin to melt the butter.
For serving ten people, I have: one and a half medium white onions, finely chopped. Some recipes call for the onion to be chopped to the length of the grain of rice you’re using. I’m not quite there yet. I have 2.5 pounds of cremini mushrooms (the brown ones) already sautéed and sitting in a colander, the collected mushroom juices added already to the ten cups of chicken stock heated to a near boil in a saucepan next to the heavy cast iron skillet; three cups of Carnaroli rice sit in a metal bowl nearby.
The butter sizzles and my brain sizzles and Emma has gone to sit with the friends and family as they pick over the opening salvo of food: a micro-salad with a dill vinaigrette Emma made from our garden, garlic grilled colossal shrimp, and artichokes fresh from Emma’s folk’s garden.
Time to add the onions before the butter reaches 212 degrees, when it will brown and become unusable.
Dad to be
Emma and I played it cool the rest of the evening. I knew that I was over acting. Like a terrible romantic comedy movie driving the point home: laughing just a little too loud at the funny stuff; groaning a little too long at the sympathetic stuff; being too quick to fill in the silences.
We got home and I was pretty buzzed. Cooking and drinking go hand in glass for me.
She shows me the pregnancy test she took.
That she bought from the 99 cent store.
That was put together incorrectly.
With an extra set of arrows facing the wrong way.
I begin to doubt the results. Emma, who is ever pragmatic, knows that all these tests do is react to the level of HCG, or Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, a hormone the body produces when conception occurs. The arrows pointing the wrong way would not affect the outcome of the test.
I decide, just in case, to get another test from Vons.
Emma, not for the first or last time, rolls her eyes politely at me.
The next day I’m standing in the feminine hygiene aisle in Vons. There are a dozen types of pregnancy tests, with a dozen different price points. Some are simple—two lines yes, one line no. Some have LCD displays that give you graphics and even let you know how many weeks you are along. I buy two boxes of two different brands with two test units in each. One with the graphics and weeks estimator and one that was cheapest but said 99% accurate.
For a moment I envision myself in a white lab coat and rubber gloves, hair frizzy with the obsession of a mad scientist as I cackle over dozens of bowls of urine that I’m furiously dipping these stick into.
Get it together, Adam.
A few hours later we get confirmation that the incorrectly assembled test strip was correct.
I look at Emma.
She seems normal. Like she just booked a hotel for a weekend vacation. All business. I’m a boiling water pot of emotion. She seems serenely disconnected.
Is it hormones? Is it me? Is she ok with this? I’ve asked her close to seven million times by this point if she’s ok. Her seven millions “yes’s” have done nothing to convince me.
She must be spiraling out of control on the inside. The calmness I exude is a front, I know. Hers must be a front as well. No matter, I’ll be here for her, I tell myself.
She has already spent the afternoon trying to unpack the shit show that is having a child in the United States. She has an Excel Spreadsheet dedicated entirely to maternity leave. The columns and rows intersect with information so arcane; so deeply rooted in a system that doesn’t seem to want you to have children; so esoteric in language that seems to have a purpose—to exclude those who can’t understand it.
Over her shoulder I see she has dozens of tabs open on her browser. Not just about maternity leave. But about what to eat. What not to eat. What to expect. What not to expect. Insurance. Who to tell and when. How the first few weeks pan out. Then the first few months.
I love her so much.
I think it’s time for me to take a deep dive into what to expect as an expecting father.
Time to prep.
Risotto – Five Key Steps, 1-3
There are five steps to making risotto after you’ve prepped the ingredients.
Step one is the rice. Remember it must be high in starch and low in the starch protecting amylose. Arborio rice is the most popular in the U.S. for such a task. I opted for Carnaroli, which has an even higher starch content than Arborio, resulting in a creamier dish (when done correctly).
Step two is the tostatura: the toasting of the onions and rice. I add the onions to the butter that hasn’t browned first. The smell of onions in butter hangs heavy in the air. I squint and focus on the onions. They cook quickly, becoming near translucent in minutes. It’s time to add the rice. You must heat the grains through. This shortens cooking time as the browned husks release their starch faster.
My mind wanders as I stir the grains. I see the word Dad typed out in my mind and all that means to me is my own father. It’s hard for me to twist that word around onto me, like one would a hose spraying cold water. I’m not a Dad. There’s been billions of those through the course of humanity. Not one of them me. I can’t be one of those.
Step three is where you add the dry white wine. This does two things. First, it stops the rice from getting too brown before you begin to add the ladles of chicken stock. Second, you imbue the granules with the story of the earth that the wine learns from where the grapes are grown, harvested, and crushed into wine. This is poetry in a cast iron skillet.
I slowly stir in the cup of sauvignon blanc. It bubbles and hisses, the heady mixture of alcohol boiling off riding bursts of honey and piquant lemon. It’s only been twelve minutes since I found out I’m going to be a dad.
The difficult part hasn’t even begun.
I grab the ladle.
Dad to Be
The following day, a few hours after we confirmed Emma was pregnant four times with all my tests, I was eyeballs deep in research. My two computer monitors were filled with articles for fathers to be:
-Lengthy think pieces from the New Yorker that left me wondering if someone with my limited vocabulary should be allowed to raise a child.
-There were hot takes and listicles from Buzzfeed filled with tongue-in-cheek-elbow-nudging-wink-wink-Down-To-Earth-Bro speak that I temporarily lost my vision.
-Blogs recounted the dad-to-be’s wide range of experiences.
-Books I was able to preview seemed to be more sophisticated distillations of all this information.
Two clear themes began to form throughout this process.
The first is that this wasn’t about me. At all.
Basically prepare to take a background role in your own life for nine months. It’s all about mom first, baby second. I’m ok with that. I know that my face pales and my stomach churns at the thought of having a human life develop within me. That Emma has deigned to play landlord to our child for nine months is all the incentive I need to keep her as happy as I am able.
The second theme is that there are no real instructions for this. Everyone is winging it. Everyone has their own story. Their own way. You can get bits and pieces of information, but ultimately you are on your own.
This is a horrifying realization. It makes sense now how come there are so many fucked up, intolerable, unbearable pieces of shit people out there. I feel sorry for their parents. And their kids.
And my parents. I call them. They live out of state. I play it cool. Hi, mom. Just wanted to chat. Weather is fine. Yeah, dinner party went well. Yes, mom, the advice you gave me on how to cook risotto was great. I stirred the hell out of it, you bet. Ok, love you guys. Talk to you soon.
I hang up. I sigh.
I’ve known for a day and a half, and my body aches.
How does Emma feel?
“Fine,” she says. I should probably quit asking.
Risotto – Five Key Steps, Four and Five
Step four is the most time consuming. You add the boiling stock one ladle at a time while continuously stirring.
Stirring.
Add broth.
Stirring.
Add broth.
Stirring.
This goes on for a while. 10 cups of broth took me almost 25 minutes. In between steps four and five you tend to add any extra ingredients outside of the base recipe. In this case, two pounds of sautéed mushrooms.
Step five is when you have gotten the grains to a sufficient level of al dente, or not quite doneness. It might not be all 10 cups. It might take more. But when it’s “just right,” you remove the pan from heat and dump in a cup or so of grated parmesan and softened butter.
Then you stir the holy hell out of it—vigorously. This gives it the velvety texture that defines risotto. It also allows you to say you have risotto in the pan in front of you, and not some steamy embarrassment.
I would think that what makes risotto so difficult is that the process is heavily involved in timing, and there is a point that happens where it either becomes risotto or it does not. It just fades away.
We serve it almost immediately. You must serve the risotto immediately. This pairs with the pork shoulder Milanese cooked in milk.
I look around the table. Everyone seems happy.
I look at Emma. She acts so normal. How does she do that?
I know there must be a neon sign, blazing away over my head that something is different.
I taste the risotto. Nice, earthy, mushroom flavor. Unctuous texture. Mildly smooth. But it’s not the velvety texture it should be. The rice is a little too crunchy.
It’s just average.
I guess there are some things you can’t prep for.
