My private Italy: In Milan, eat like a “Milanese”

“Milan l’è on gran Milan”, “Milan is a great Milan”, goes an old song the Milanese still love to sing, as if their city needed to underline its own greatness. Visitors arrive with a list of things to see, the Duomo, the Last Supper, La Scala; very few arrive with a list of things to eat. Milan has a reputation as the city of work, fashion and finance, where lunch is a quick sandwich at a counter and dinner is a business meeting. It is a reputation the Milanese quietly enjoy, because it keeps the best tables for themselves.

The truth is that Milan has one of the most distinctive kitchens in Italy. Its landscape and history shaped it. The rice fields of the lower Milanese plain explain the triumph of risotto; the dairy farms and pig breeding explain the butter, the cheeses and the sausages; the long, foggy winters, with plenty of firewood at hand, explain the slow braises and the boiled meats. And on top of all this, centuries of rulers left their mark on the table: Celts and Romans, Lombards, then the Spanish and the Austrians, in a city that has always been a crossroads of trade. Butter instead of olive oil, rice instead of pasta, slow cooking instead of quick grills: that is the grammar of the Milanese kitchen.

So, put the shopping bags down for a moment. Let’s eat like a Milanese.

Two souls at the same table

From the age of the Visconti and the Sforza, the great families who ruled Milan from the 13th to the 16th century, the city’s cuisine grew along two opposite paths. On one side, the sumptuous banquets of the lords; on the other, the cooking of the people, rooted in the peasant tradition.

The two dishes most closely tied to Milan embody this double soul perfectly. Risotto alla milanese, coloured with precious saffron, has the colour of gold, a symbol of wealth. The cassoeula is a humble stew of cabbage and the cheapest cuts of pork. One dish for the palace, one for the farmhouse, and both still at the heart of every Milanese family.

Risotto alla milanese: the colour of a cathedral

If Milan had a flag, it would be yellow. And its most famous dish comes with one of my favourite food legends.

In 1574, so the story goes, the Flemish master glassmaker Valerio di Fiandra was working on the stained-glass windows of the Duomo. One of his apprentices was nicknamed Zafferano, “Saffron”, because he added a pinch of the spice to his pigments to make the yellows glow. On the day of the master’s daughter’s wedding, the apprentice played a joke and slipped saffron into the buttered rice served at the banquet. The guests were astonished, and a legend was born. The more imaginative add that alchemists believed gold was good for the heart.

The method is simple, and that is its secret. An onion is gently softened in butter, the rice (Carnaroli or Vialone Nano, grown just outside the city) is toasted and splashed with white wine, then cooked slowly in beef broth, often enriched with a little bone marrow, and coloured with saffron. At the end comes the mantecatura: off the heat, a generous knob of butter and grated Parmigiano are stirred in until the rice becomes silky. A proper risotto must be served all’onda, “like a wave”: when you tilt the plate, it should move gently. If it stands up like a cake, something went wrong.

I love Milanese cooking, and risotto above all, because it reminds me of my grandmother. She used to make it for me on rainy days, those cold, grey days when all you want is to stay warm indoors. That is exactly what a good risotto does: it warms you up like a hug.

Nothing is wasted. The next day, leftover risotto is pressed into a hot buttered pan until it forms a thin, crunchy golden disc: the risotto al salto, once a way to use leftovers and today a dish many Milanese order on purpose.

Ossobuco: the bone with a hole

Risotto alla milanese has a natural partner: Ossobuco, oss bus in Milanese dialect, literally “bone with a hole”. It is a thick slice of veal shank, braised for hours until the meat falls away from the bone, leaving at its centre that precious hole full of marrow. Serious Milanese eat the marrow with a small spoon, and nobody will judge you for doing the same.

The traditional recipe is in bianco, without tomato, and it is finished with gremolata, a fresh mix of lemon zest, garlic and parsley scattered over the meat at the last moment: a sharp, green note that cuts through all that richness. It is served with soft polenta or, best of all, with risotto alla milanese on the same plate.

Cotoletta: a cutlet and a diplomatic incident

There is no Milan without its cotoletta alla milanese. A thick veal chop, bone still attached, dipped in egg, coated in breadcrumbs and fried slowly in clarified butter until it turns deep golden brown.

The Viennese claim their Wiener Schnitzel came first. The Milanese reply that a document from 1134 already lists lombolos cum panitio, breaded loins, on the menu offered by the canons of the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, and a popular legend says it was Field Marshal Radetzky who took the recipe from Milan to Vienna, not the other way around. You will also find a thinner, wider version, beaten flat and hanging over the edges of the plate: the Milanese call it orecchia d’elefante, the elephant’s ear. Delicious, but for purists the real one has the bone.

The winter kitchen: cassoeula and mondeghili

Come to Milan between late autumn and February and you will meet the city’s most honest dish. The cassoeula is a stew of Savoy cabbage, strictly picked after the first frost when the leaves turn sweeter, cooked for hours with pork ribs, rind, trotters and the small sausages called verzini. The cheap cuts were there to flavour the cabbage, the most common vegetable in the Lombard countryside. The result, the Milanese say, must be rich and tachénto, “sticky”. It is traditionally eaten around the feast of Sant’Antonio Abate on January 17th and always served with polenta.

Milan’s thrift also gave birth to the mondeghili, meatballs made from leftover boiled meat, bread, egg and cheese, fried in butter. The name is believed to come from the Spanish albondiguillas, a souvenir of the two centuries when Milan was ruled from Madrid. Today they are one of the city’s favourite bites at aperitivo time.

Cheese in Milan? Yes, ask for Gorgonzola and Mascarpone

Cheese and cream are everywhere in Milanese cooking. The most famous cheese is Gorgonzola, born in the town of the same name just outside Milan and made in two versions, sweet and creamy or sharp and spicy.

And then there is mascarpone, a rich Lombard cream cheese that the world knows as the soul of tiramisù, and that the Milanese whip into a sweet cream to serve with their Christmas cake.

Panettone: the bread of Toni

Which brings us to panettone, the tall, domed Christmas bread studded with candied orange and raisins. Legend takes us to the court of Ludovico il Moro: on Christmas Eve the chef burned the dessert, and a kitchen boy named Toni saved the day with a sweet bread he had made for himself. The Duke loved it and called it pan de Toni. Almost certainly invented.

The real story is just as fascinating. For centuries panettone was a low, rustic loaf; it was Milanese bakers of the early 20th century who gave it its tall shape and extraordinary lightness, thanks to a natural sourdough and a leavening that can take up to three days. And the Milanese still keep one last slice until February 3rd, the feast of San Biagio, to eat at breakfast and protect the throat for the rest of the year.

La Milano da bere: the city of the aperitivo

In the 1980s an advertising slogan gave Milan a nickname it never lost: la Milano da bere, “the Milan to drink”. The aperitivo here is a real lifestyle. It was in Milan that Gaspare Campari created his famous red bitter, and in 1915 his son Davide opened the Camparino at the entrance of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, still one of the most beautiful bars in Italy. In 1972 a bartender reached for gin to make a Negroni, grabbed sparkling wine by mistake, and invented the Negroni sbagliato, the “wrong Negroni”.

Between about 6.30 and 9 pm, follow the Milanese to the Navigli, the old canals, to the Colonne di San Lorenzo, to Corso Sempione or to the Isola district, order a bitter ruby-red drink, and watch the city switch on its lights.

3 Adresses where to eat true Cucina Milanese

Osteria del Treno – The building once housed the railway workers’ mutual aid society, founded in 1887, and keeps its beautiful Liberty-style hall. Opened in 1989 and run by the same family for three generations, it is considered the place where Slow Food took its first steps in Milan.

Trattoria Mirta – Opened in 2007 by chef Juan Lema and Cristina Borgherini, with bread, pasta and desserts made in-house and a menu that changes daily according to what small producers bring in. The perfect place to see how the Milanese really eat on a weekday evening.

Pasticceria Marchesi 1824 For two centuries this historic pastry shop has sweetened Milan, and its elegant salon is one of the most charming places in the city for a coffee and a pastry. At Christmas, its panettone is a small Milanese institution.