Casa be Loverly Recipe: Arancini

I instagrammed a photo of these arancini the other night and the beautiful, funny & talented Glowless asked me to blog the recipe so without further ado...

You need a good risotto base essentially. The secret to good risotto in my opinion is not stirring constantly though that helps but having good stock and leaving it about 5 minutes underdone, whacking a good knob of butter and Parmesan in, putting the lid on the pot and leaving it to rest off the heat. I'm not going to write out a risotto recipe because Jamie Oliver has a truly kicking one.

We normally make a double lot of risotto and freeze half to make arancini another time which is what we did the other night with a 3 mushroom and basil risotto.

To make the arancini you essentially make up a production line as if you were making schnitzels....

For one serve of risotto ie. 1 cup of uncooked rice I'd do the following:

- a plate of seasoned flour
- 3 eggs, whisked til smooth
- a plate of fresh breadcrumbs - I like adding Parmesan and fresh herbs to this but that's up to you
- some cubed mozzarella - not too big
- you could use some cubed ham if you like, this is quite traditional

Method:
Preheat a frypan with some olive oil to shallow fry on medium heat
With wet hands grab about 2 tablespoons of risotto and shape into a ball, shoving the cube of mozzarella and ham in the middle of the ball as you go
Dip in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs
Fry for about 5 minutes until golden and rotate around to ensure that the whole "ball" is golden brown
Drain on kitchen paper.

The type of arancini you make is really up to you with the type of risotto you make but if your veggies are chunky I'd recommend chopping them a bit first so they don't protrude from the arancini.

And if you have any leftover flour, egg, breadcrumbs - mix them up and add a dash of milk to them to get a thick pancake batter consistency and fry off tablespoons of that. My Italian Dad does this all the time as little chef's treats and they're delish.

If you give them a run let me know what you think, they're one of my favourite things to cook and eat! ;)

Much love,
Cat
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