“Arancini” means “little orange balls.” I ate them once at a restaurant, and just as I thought when I first had risotto, I thought: “Wow! This is fancy! If I every cook arancini, I’ll know I’m becoming a cook.”

Arancini is so simple to make, that thought makes me laugh!

Some people don’t like leftover risotto: it becomes sticky and gummy, and loses the “fresh” consistency after a day in the fridge. I don’t mind it, but I love arancini better.

It’s so simple: make a ball of cold risotto, stick a little bit of melting cheese in the middle of it, roll it in bread crumbs, fry it in oil. Yum!

Yesterday night I only have cheddar cheese — I forgot to buy the swiss or mozzarella that is best in arancini. I wasn’t crazy about the cheddar flavor, but it still worked okay. I used a mozzarella-pesto sauce (the same one I had on my meatballs a few weeks ago, i.e., crushed tomatoes mixed with pesto) and it also tasted very good on arancini!

Giada‘s recipe is slightly more complicated than mine: she rolls the balls in egg before bread crumbs. I also used plain Parmesan risotto and her recipe calls for mushroom risotto with peas. I think any kind of leftover risotto might work.

Get the recipe from Giada >>>

Related posts:

1. Parmesan Risotto
2. What We Ate, Week ending 22 October 2010
3. Mozzarella Stuffed Chicken Sausage Balls with Tomato-Basil Sauce
4. What We Ate (Week Ending June 20)
5. Grilled Chicken Salad with Maple Vinegar Dressing

Tags: Dinner, easy, Main Dish, risotto

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under yummy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.