Angelica: I’m going to talk about an Italian dish – risotto. It’s a rice dish and most people in my country enjoy it. Unlike in most countries, we fry the rice with onion in olive oil before we add any liquid. We don’t cook it in water, but a kind of soup or broth, which can be made of meat, fish or chicken. 

I’m from Milan, and our traditional risotto is made using saffron, which gives the dish a beautiful yellow colour. It’s a very creamy and delicious dish. We usually have it as a starter, not as the main meal. 

Firstly, I think that it’s popular in my country because – and not a lot of people know this – but Italy’s one of the biggest producers of rice in Europe. It’s very simple to cook, and as I said before, you can use all types of ingredients. Anything that you can find in the fridge! Also, Italians don’t like to waste food, so if you have some fish or some meat and it isn’t enough for a meal, you can always make risotto.

I love it first of all because it always reminds me of home. My mother’s very fond of cooking risotto and if I was unhappy, she used to make it for me and it always cheered me up. I don’t live at home now and so when I’m feeling homesick and missing my family, I always try to find an Italian restaurant and have some risotto! And secondly, I like it because it’s a great meal to make for friends – easy to prepare, but very tasty.

You can get risotto everywhere nowadays, but it isn’t always that good. If you visit my country, especially the northern part, I recommend that you try to taste risotto there. It really is special and I promise that you will find it different to any risotto that you have tasted before.