Knowing the Western bias against short-grain rice, I made an interesting experiment once. I had invited the chef from Harry’s Bar in Venice to Japan, and I asked him to make a risotto. I told him we had many varieties and grades of short-grain rice in Japan and asked him to select the one best for his recipe from a large variety of samples from all over Japan. I had simply numbered each one, so he had no idea of how they were rated here. He boiled the different kinds and sampled each one, and finally said, without any hesitation at all, “This is it!” It was sasa-nishiki, the rice we rate the very highest quality of all! We may not be far wrong in considering Japan a rice paradise.

I vividly remember reading this part of Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (10/10 cookbook) and being enamored with the idea of risotto from rice grown outside Italy. High end Japanese rice works wonderfully, as does Carolina Gold.