Risotto with Mushrooms and Almonds

The Piedmontese town of Gavi, today at the center of a district in the southeastern corner of the region that produces a charming white wine by the same name, was not Piedmontese at all until the middle of the nineteenth century, but owed allegiance to Genoa, the capital of the modern region of Liguria, whose coast constitutes the Italian Riviera. I am not all that interested in historical vicissitudes, but I was intrigued when I was served this risotto in Piedmont’s Gavi to find echoes in