The Risotto all'Amarone Pilgrimage

Risotto all'Amarone is Verona showing off quietly. Amarone della Valpolicella is made from dried grapes, concentrated and intense - one of Italy's most celebrated (and priciest) red wines, produced in the hills just outside the city. The risotto uses it lavishly: Vialone Nano rice toasted, then cooked slowly with Amarone and stock, ladle by ladle, until the rice turns a deep, winey purple and absorbs that concentrated, raisiny, slightly bitter depth. Finished with butter and Parmigiano, it's rich, velvety and entirely about the wine in it.

Verona is the payoff. You know it for Romeo and Juliet (the balcony exists, the queue is long, the story is fictional), but the real Verona is a pink-marble Roman city with a 2,000-year-old arena, elegant piazzas, wine bars tucked into medieval arches, and the Valpolicella vineyards a short drive into the hills. A plate of Amarone risotto in a Verona osteria, with a glass of the wine it was cooked in alongside, is one of those meals where the place and the plate are the same story. You have Milan's saffron risotto and Venice's squid-ink risotto on the site already - this is the red-wine chapter.