I’m gonna say today’s dish was more inspired rather than followed to a T. As I’ve mentioned I’ve been trying to eat the food that I have in my kitchen instead of buying too much and that’s led us to arancini. I was watching Bon Appetit videos on youtube and landed on Molly Baz making mozzarella arancini and I realized this was a perfect dish for me to try to make this week. Typically, I make one recipe that is written to feed a whole family of people and I don’t realize it until it’s cooked an on my kitchen table so I have to eat it for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week just to finish it. It’s not a terrible system because that means I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat for lunch at work each day but it does get a little old. Well this week I made that shepherd’s pie from Good Eats and loved it so much I managed to finish it in about 4 meals so by Thursday night I had nothing to eat and no more leftovers. I did realize that I just happened to buy a bag of frozen ready to cook risotto from Wegmans last week when I went grocery shopping so instead of just making that, I could have a really simple shortcut to try and make my first arancini using Molly’s recipe as guidance.
I can easily say I did not grow up with arancini. This was just out of the realm of non-asian cooking that it completely missed my radar until maybe 3 years ago when I started working in the prepared food department at Wegmans and we put out arancini on the Hot Food Bars. Spoilers for all you Wegmans arancini lovers out there, we get it frozen and fry/bake it. This is not your grandmother’s homemade arancini. Now for me, this was a great discovery. The arancini at Wegmans is still somehow nice and airy and I wold wait until it was a little dry and crisp to eat it. Stuffed with meat in the center, these little guys filled you up and made you warm. I love carbs.
So when I watch Molly making it and realized I had risotto waiting for me in the fridge as a helping hand/short cut, I knew it was time to try and make it on my own. Of course, this is a super time consuming dish so while it’s not terribly difficult, if someone makes this for you, its love. They just spent hours basically making you two dishes because risotto is only halfway there. Thank your little Italian grandmas.
Once the risotto is made, Molly says to let it cool so you can handle it, then it needs to be portioned out, flattened, stuffed with mozzarella (I had shredded but her cubes looked so much easier to handle), then frozen for about 10mins to harden just a little. I took this time to do some dishes and clean up my recipe box. Then they’re dredged in flour, egg, and panko (I only had regular breadcrumbs) and fried around 350F. Now, my thermometer is dead and I haven’t gotten new batteries for it so I’m eye balling the oil and trying to get it right but this is just setting yourself up to fail so get working thermometer and don’t be like me. Molly advises to cook them for about 6-8mins but mine are brown and crispy in about 3 so I get a little nervous and throw them in a 350F oven for 10mins to make sure the insides are warm and my cheese is melty, praying that they don’t darken too much more on the outside. Guys, I nailed it. Granted, these would be much better if I used cubed mozzarella and panko breadcrumbs instead of regular Italian breadcrumbs but with what I had I’m pretty proud of myself. I could’ve had them be a little smaller and I was seriously missing a marinara/tomato sauce to dip them in but overall, it was great. The cheese melted so well and they were oozy and warm I couldn’t help but rip them open and eat with my hands. It was a little messy but warm and perfect. Like I said, very time consuming and I didn’t even make risotto from scratch so these are not a regular dish to make but they’re love man.