Tomato & Broccoli Nostos (Homecoming) Risotto

Hey! It's been a minute!

Hello! It’s been a minute! Thanks for your patience—It’s not because I’ve been making bad risotto, it’s because I’ve been busy. Hehe!

Get you friends like these.

My alma mater, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its theatre major this year. I drove out to upstate NY to join the celebration. This major is special because it didn’t even exist when I matriculated!

Although I double-majored in English and Theatre, my Theater major was an independent creation, a combination of various classes across multiple departments that I argued into existence. It was… a major in Shakespeare, honestly. Thanks to that, and to all my classmates who also invented their own majors where there were none, our professors argued an official major into existence, and built it into an incredibly thriving program.

My photo from The Game of Love and Chance at HWS, Feb. 2012.

So in honor of my return, I have Tomato & Broccoli Nostos¹ Risotto to share with you this week. This is a risotto-fied version of the meal that I survived senior year on, swapping rice for pasta and not burning the garlic because I know better now!

Reunions inherently offer the opportunity to benchmark yourself against some past version of you, and I was somewhat apprehensive at returning to HWS. College Shell was both a high-achieving, departmental superstar double major with Honors, and abjectly terrified and suicidally depressed for, oh, most of the time she² was there. College Shell was surrounded by people who loved her and thought she was great, and College Shell believed to her very core that everyone was lying to her and secretly hated her (spoiler alert: they didn’t. They so, so, didn’t).

I played Berta in Hedda Gabler my first year of college. I was so wrapped up in my insecurities that I could not see how much I was loved & supported by my roommate & friends. They came to a three-hour, two-intermission play because I was in it. They made me a sign! They drew me on it!

College Shell did the best she could, and ten years turned her into Current Shell. Current Shell is College Shell but calmer, and if I’m a little less focused, well, I’m a lot more stable, and it turns out that I’ll take stability and relaxation over anxious overachievement any day of the week.

Although my mental health is, thank goodness, very solid these days, I was still unsure if returning to campus would trigger some of that past terror in me again. It’s happened before—certain places make Current Me go Elsewhere within myself while whatever past version of myself that belonged to the place takes the reins. Depending on the place, this can be a delight, but it can also be really, really Not Fun.

My photo from DNA at HWS, February 2013.

Reader, coming back to HWS was a homecoming of the best kind.

I only encountered parts of the school that were positive and joyful, like touring the beautiful new building that now houses Theatre, rather than the hodgepodge of charming-yet-chaotic classrooms I knew as a student. Or attending a Frame/Works panel series around Friday’s performance (so called because the pre-show and post-show talks… frame the work). Or seeing former professors who remembered me—not just knew who I was, but remembered what I was like in class, remembered what I was involved in—I felt known, seen, at home.

I cannot but congratulate myself on having found at last the right place for my beginning. Elizabeth Blackwell

One of my most significant takeaways from this weekend was a fresh look at the community. HWS professors go to incredible lengths to support their students’ growth both in the classroom and outside of it. It’s something I saw as a student, but I didn’t have the context to understand how unique it was to have my Honors advisor say “Hey, you want to go to a professional conference? I’ll arrange it with the school,” or another professor—who wasn’t even mine!—set up a kind of off-the-books, freeform independent study for me just because he could. Because… he thought I'd get something out of it? He saw something in me? He wanted to? I still don’t entirely know.

2015 to 2024.

I wasn’t always able to accept the acceptance and support people tried to give me. I didn’t have the self-acceptance or self-confidence to realize that I was being given the world, that I deserved every opportunity, and no matter how many people tried to tell me in every different way that I had something special, my inner voice was too good at shouting them down.

Being in that environment helped, though. It planted a seed. Even if I couldn't always accept the kindnesses and care and opportunities that the HWS community offered me, I saw others being cared for in the same way. My worldview started cracking. Light started seeping under the threshold.

A puppet show put on by Mekhar Bhuana Conservatory in Bali, Indonesia, where I studied Balinese music and dance as part of an HWS Theatre study abroad program.

There’s a statue of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first US woman to be granted a medical degree, on the quad. She matriculated at Geneva Medical College, which eventually became HWS. The quote at her feet reads “I cannot but congratulate myself on having found at last the right place for my beginning.”

Me, too.

Tomato & Broccoli Nostos Risotto

Serves 3-4

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes

• 2 heads broccoli, chopped

• 1 head of garlic, cloves smashed and torn into large pieces

• 1-2 tbsp red pepper flakes

• Black pepper to taste

• Salt to taste

• Olive oil

• 3-4 quarts vegetable broth or equivalent bouillon

• 1 onion, diced

• 1 c arborio rice

• 1/2 c dry white wine

• 1 c shredded parmesan

• 1/4 c mascarpone (optional)

• Juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Across two sheet trays, spread the cherry tomatoes, broccoli, and garlic. Drizzle the vege with about 1 tbsp olive oil each and sprinkle across the red pepper flakes, a few generous cracks of black pepper, and a generous pinch of salt. Mix so everything is coated.

Set the vegetable broth to simmer in a saucepan on a back burner.

In a Dutch oven, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the onion and gently cook until it is translucent and tender. Turn the heat down to prevent color if need be.

Add the rice and whisk it around the pan until it is translucent and chattery.

Add the white wine and whisk vigorously until absorbed.

Add the stock, about 1/2 cup at at time, waiting until each addition is absorbed before adding the next. It should take about 5 minutes to absorb the broth each time; adjust the heat as needed. The rice will take about 40-60 min; take a note of when you started to time the cooking of the vege.

When the rice is about half done (about 20-30 minutes since you began cooking), put the tomato-broccoli trays in the oven. Leave them to cook without disturbing them until the rice is done—about 20-40 minutes. If they look like they’re cooing too quickly, or the rice is cooking slowly, you can turn the heat down to 375°F.

When the rice is tender and starchy, add the parmesan and mascarpone (if using) and whisk to combine. Squeeze in the lemon juice and whisk.

Remove the baking trays from the oven and top risotto with vege.

1. Yes, this is a James Joyce reference. Of course there’s a James Joyce reference in my COLLEGE THROWBACK RISOTTO RECIPE. Nostos is the last section of Ulysses (and, fine, the Odyssey, if you’re more a Classicist than a Modernist), meaning Homecoming. It’s also the root of the word nostalgia.

2. I get to talk about past Shell in she/her terms because she’s me, but you don’t because you’re not. They/them for me now and always please and thank you.