The classic northern Italian dish of rice butter and cheese. Though mostly butter 🙂
Aaron leads us through an extremely educational demonstration of how a restaurant would go about producing a number of different risottos.
Four in our case.

Basically you pre-cook the rice to just a slightly extra firm risotto state, as you would for preparing a normal risotto, then you set it aside to cool.
When a customer orders a particular risotto dish, the appropriate ingredients are set going in a pan and the pre-cooked rice added mid-way through, loosened as necessary with additional hot stock, before being buttered and cheesed (the stage Italians call Mantecatura, or creaming).
Ladle onto a plate or a shallow bowl for serving, firmly smack the bottom of the plate with the palm of your hand to nicely spread the risotto, then scatter with grated cheese, drizzle with a flavoured oil, or judiciously arrange the toppings of choice, and there you are.

Of course, if you were cooking a single risotto at home you would skip the whole rice-spreading-and-cooling step, and just add your particular flavouring ingredients to the risotto as it reaches the end of the stock-simmering stage, before, with or after the butter-and-cheesing.
As you like.

The preferred consistency of the finished Italian risotto varies according to dish and to locale:
The northern regions of Piedmont and Lombardy prefer a somewhat firmer manecato (creamed) risotto, such as the classic Milanese saffron risotto zafferano or frutti di mare.
Whereas in the rice-growning areas of Piedmont and particularly the western Veneto they favour a slightly sloppier consistency that moves like a rolling wave all'onda. Though in Venice they do go so far as to practically make a soup of risi e bisi (rice 'n' peas).

The rice itself should always be cooked al dente - that is with a little bite still remaining in the centre, which should be visible as a dot of white if you crush one of the rice grains.

We cheesed our risottos exclusively with parmesan, but Aaron observes that other cheeses might be acceptable, notably gruyère or even blue cheeses. Indeed a classic Risotto ai Quattro Formaggi might be made mixing gorgonzola, pecorino or parmesan, emmental or taleggio, and gruyère or fontina.