Arancini Di Riso

Here’s a great use for any kind of left over rice!
As long as it’s not plain rice and is left over from either a risotto or some kind of flavoured rice (mine was left-over chicken, chorizo and prawn rice. Highly flavoured and ideal for turning into aranci (Italian for ‘oranges’ and you can see why in the finished dish) The more subtly flavoured the rice, the more subtle the arancini.
If you want to add flavour to the arancini, for instance if your rice is a little on the plain side, you can stuff the arancini with left-over ragu sauce, if you have some in the freezer, or with little cubes of mozzarella, or indeed, both.

Left-over rice

First of all form the cold rice into large walnut sized balls:

If you are going to stuff the arancini, then make sure the filling is properly enclosed.
It’s not as fiddly a job as it looks really, as the cold rice will hold itself together really well.

Coat the arancini, first in egg, which has been thinned down with a little water so it’s not too thick and ‘eggy’ for want of a better word, then in breadcrumbs, the staler the better, shop-bought will do.
Deep fry on a medium heat, so that they have a chance to cook through and ensure the cold rice is piping hot, before they become wonderfully golden.

How can anything coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried not taste great, right?

Before I go, I want to wish you all a wonderful Sunday and show you Nigella’s old-fashioned cheesecake from her latest book ‘Kitchen’.

I love baked cheesecake, but don’t feel that I can recommend this one, it was neither sweet enough, lemony enough, or tasty enough. Mediocre is the only word I can think of to describe it.
A shame, but there you go. Not everything is worth making again, right?