More of a soup than a risotto, risi e bisi is traditionally a springtime dish when the new peas are at their best. The earliest record of it is in the 1500s when it became known as the dish for the Doge. It was made on 25th April on the feast of San Marco. Under the Austro-Hungarian occupation in the 1800s strawberries were temporarily added to risi e bisi as a political protest. The three colours, green, white and red, were the colours of the tricolore, the flag of the united Italy.
Lele, from the famous restaurant Buso la Torre on the glass-making island of Murano, told us that he picks peas from his garden and uses the pods to make the stock. He grows enough to freeze so he can make risi e bisi all year round. In the absence of home-grown peas we found this recipe one of the hardest to perfect for the book. No matter what peas, frozen or fresh, we used or what we used to make the stock, such as mangetout and sugar snap peas, we just couldn’t get a flavour we were happy with. Giancarlo suggested using tinned peas, which I didn’t think fitted the romantic image of the recipe using spring’s fresh new peas. However he insisted on having a go and I have to admit, through clenched teeth, he was right. Bingo, it’s delicious, everything it should be, full of flavour and terribly moreish.