Recipe: Spicy butternut Arancini balls!

Well, if there`s one thing I really like, is fried food. It`s a bad habit and I should eat much MUCH less from it, as a hungarian it regularly comes back into my “diet”. For a while I thought we are the only nation who obsessed with it. And I mean seriously, we deep fry anything! Cheese, chicken, cauliflower, pumpkin, anything, and sometimes it seems to me this it the only food we really sell in food court`s or in take aways. Other thing I really like is italian food, dunno why I always did enjoy my pasta and fresh vegetables, and antipasto buffets. When I realised italians also love dipping their food into hot oil. Such like arancini, or the other name suppli.

Arancini, are very easy to make, and they are very filling. We are talking about a bit al dante risotto base mixed with some egg, mozzarella cheese, and butter, rolled into balls, batter, and deep fried. One can be a snack between meals, or 3 of them with some salad can make a complete lunch, as they are very filling.  Also, they are a good way to reycle some leftover risotto from last nights dinner, into a snack which the whole family enjoys. And as much as you can make risotto from pretty much anything, so you can make arancini balls from about anything.

We are coming close to butternut season, and now the kitchen I`m currently working in, has it`s hands on a very big delivery of butternut, so we are trying to put various things on the menu that people might still and enjoy, and can be a bit of change after butternut soup for example. So came the idea of butternut arancini!

Ingredients (for about 10 medium sized balls)

2 cups of cooked risotto rise, dry, not overcooked, not seasoned

1 half of a medium butternut, no skin, no seeds

spices sumac, white pepper, kurkuma, cajun pepper, salt

3 cloves of garlic chopped

olive oil

1 big mozzarella-chopped

1 egg

3 spoons of butter

flour, egg wash, and breadcrumbs for the batter

Cut medium big cubes out of the butternut, season it with the spices, add some olive oil and the garlic, put it on a baking tray, and roast it for about 25 minutes on 180C in the oven. It might take longer time, It`s ready when you can easily mash the butternut with a fork.

Cook the risotto rise, on some butter, gradually adding the stock, and reducing the liquid. It`s ready when the rice is only a littlebit hard in the middle. Take it off the heat but don`t cool!

To the medium warm risotto base add the butter-it has to melt inside, the egg- make sure you whisk it very fast, or you going to end up with scrambled eggs in your rise, and the mashed butternut, and the chopped mozzarella. The mozzarella also has to melt in your mix. If doesn`t put it back on the heat, make sure it doesn`t burn!

Form medium sized balls… well, the size is somewhere between a tennis ball and a table tennis ball. It`s a good handful. Start battering, as dipping it first to the flour, and egg, and breadcrumbs. Now here the egg and breadcrumb part you need to do twice, so the batter will hold, and won`t fall off during frying.  Fry in hot oil..make sure you have enough oil to cover the balls completely!

Enjoy! As it is really!:)