Recipe below: Risotto with Preboggion, Upstate New York–Style
I love a big foraged armful of spring greens from my upstate New York backyard. They’re the best thing to eat not just for health but mostly because I like them. They look good too, with their various shades of green. I’m especially drawn to dark leaves, like the ones on stinging nettles. And all this rummaging around drags me back in time to my Puglian and Campanian ancestors. I imagine that Achille, Fortunata, Caprina, Tecla, Assunta, and Leonardo also liked the look and aroma of wild weeds and herbs. Dandelions smell pissy and sweet. The wild thyme and mint around my place are pungent, almost too bitter to eat, but a little heat tames them, so they’re good in a marinade for stuff destined for the grill. The southern Italian foraging genes that I imagine I have in me are great for a touch of romantic misery. But there’s no misery for me, and hardly even any effort. That was probably not the case for my dirt poor (but possibly dirt rich in some respects) ancestors in Southern Italy, whose lives likely depended on those greens. I can wander around my backyard ripping up weeds while sipping a cold glass of rosé. Kind of decadent, but interesting.
The first thing I ever foraged was wild garlic, although back when I was a kid we called it onion grass. It was all over the place in my not-so-rural Long Island community. I and a few of my buddies used to rip up the bulbs with their chive-like tops and take them to a secluded place in the woods, start a scary little fire, and cook them up in a beat-up aluminum pan I found in our basement. We sautéed the onion grass in a pungent and in retrospect not great quality olive oil I took from our family kitchen. The whole thing had an intense, unfamiliar smell, different from the sweeter supermarket garlic I was used to. I remember cooking hot dogs back there, too, and now that I think of it I’m almost sure we ate the wild garlic on blackened hot dogs we speared with sticks. Not bad for a wild adventure 30 minutes from Manhattan. I also gathered dandelion greens, dropping them into our dinnertime salad bowl. My grandmother taught me about dandelions.
Preboggion is a Ligurian mix of wild greens and herbs. The name may come from the Ligurian dialect verb preboggî, which means to preboil. It’s used as a filling for pansoti, a type of swollen-looking ravioli, in soups such as minestrone, and stuffed into torte, tossed with pasta, or just eaten boiled and dressed with olive oil. I love the aroma of boiling preboggion. In Genoa I ordered it as a contorni that also contained potatoes, and I couldn’t stop eating it, really wanting a second serving but knowing I’d never finish it all. Depending on the time of year, preboggion can include borage, dandelion, nettles, galatsida (a type of Mediterranean daisy), wild chard, rampion (another Mediterranean flower, with leaves that taste like spinach), parsley, fennel, anise, or marjoram.
For my Upstate New York version, I found stinging nettles, field cress, garlic mustard, dandelion, wild garlic, and wild thyme. I threw in a bit of Swiss chard and some marjoram I had in the fridge. Later in the season I can find purslane and lamb’s-quarters, which tastes like strong spinach. In a month or so I’ll add borage, which I grow myself. That’s often an element in the wild Ligurian mixes, but I can’t find it wild around here. It tastes like cucumber, both the leaves and the electric-blue, star-shaped flowers. I also grow fennel. I can’t find that wild around here either, but it’s another item Ligurian cooks often include.
In my recipe I’ve listed all the wild greens and herbs I used, but you can make a nice version of preboggion with stuff from the farmer’s market or grocery store. I’d suggest a mix of arugula, Swiss chard, spinach, chicory, and maybe some watercress. And a few herbs such as marjoram, thyme, and parsley or basil.
Risotto with Preboggion, Upstate New York–Style
(Serves 5)
For the preboggion:
A handful each of stemmed field cress, stinging nettles (the leaves pulled from the tough stems using gloves), garlic mustard, dandelion greens, and Swiss chard
The leaves from about 6 big sprigs of marjoram
A handful of basil leaves
The green tops from a few ramps
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
For the rest of the risotto:
6 cups vegetable broth or light chicken broth
Extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large spring onion, cut into small dice, using a lot of the tender green part
The leaves from a few big sprigs of thyme, lightly chopped
2 cups carnaroli rice
Salt
A few scrapings of nutmeg
½ cup dry vermouth
Black pepper
½ cup freshly grated grana Padano cheese (I don’t like this risotto cheese-heavy; I want to taste the greens)
Set up a big pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Add all the greens and herbs. Blanch them for about 2 minutes. Drain them into a colander. Run cold water over them, to stop the cooking and set their color. Squeeze out as much water out as you can. You’ll want about 1½ cups of blanched greens for the risotto. If you have extra, add it to a soup or a pasta dish, or just eat it drizzled with good olive oil and a little salt. You want to make the blanched greens and herbs into a simple pesto, so put them into a food processor, add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a little salt, and pulse 4 or 5 times, until you have a kind of rough purée. Scrape the purée into a small bowl.
Pour the broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Turn down the heat to low, and keep the broth at a simmer.
Get out a large, wide pan with not too high sides. This is best for risotto since the surface area provides good evaporation. Add a big drizzle of olive oil and half the butter, and get it hot over medium heat. Add the onion and the thyme, and sauté until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add the rice, season it with a little salt and the nutmeg, and sauté it until it’s well coated with oil and is just starting to toast, about 3 more minutes (although it shouldn’t actually start to brown, so don’t let it get that far). Add the vermouth, and let it bubble away.
Start adding a few ladles of broth, stirring often until the pan goes almost dry. You want to continue adding broth, stirring, and letting the pan go almost dry until the rice is just tender. In my experience the process takes about 17 or 18 minutes. After about 15 minutes, when the consistency starts to look creamy, give it a taste to see if it’s tender but al dente.
When the rice is just tender, add the preboggion, stirring it in. The rice will turn a lovely deep green. Turn off the heat, and add the rest of the butter, the grana Padano, and some black pepper, stirring it all in. Add a bit more broth to retain a loose but not soupy consistency. Taste for salt, and ladle the risotto into bowls. Serve right away.