Why do you go on holiday to eat? That’s of course assuming you do go on holiday to eat. Though even if you don’t, it surely plays some part in your travel plans; to see the mosaics of Naples with a bag of mozzarella, the Taj Mahal with a fistful of dal, Gaudi washed down with gazpacho (my list would go on…).
But why do you? Really? It’s a deceptively simple question. The answer seems obvious, things along the lines of “to taste new things,” “to taste delicious things,” “to taste things where they grow.” Keep searching, you may well get to notions like “locality” and “authenticity”.
Or at least I did when I pondered the above, as I sat in Sicily wondering why it hadn’t quite met whatever these desires were.
The arrival into Catania airport did make a good start though. One of Italy’s greatest gratifications is that as soon as you walk through customs you can take an espresso at the bar. Good strong coffee is best drunk still on your feet, clearly signifying that your restless soul and the contents of your cup are well aligned.
The bar had arancini (breaded and deep fried rice balls) too, which I snapped up gratefully and shared with my baby. This evoked excited exclamations from Italian onlookers of “that’s the first time I’ve seen a baby eat arancini!” Delivered in such a way to make me uncertain if they were solely endeared to it, or actually very judgemental of my parenting.
The crisis in gastronomic travelling purpose only began in the supermarket. It starts with something trivial like noticing that that the brand of burrata is the same one they stock in your local boutique grocers in Peckham. It escalates when you look at the fish counter and see it’s the same farmed sea-bass as what you’d see in Waitrose. It thickens as you look at all the hundreds of cheeses and wonder how there are so many when you’ve barely seen a single farm animal in your last three hours driving across the interior of the island.
The roots of breakdown are now entrenched, the first green shoots begin sprouting through the soil of your fantasy and you collapse to your knees in the middle of the dairy isle and shout to the heavens “where did all this milk come from???”
Or perhaps you don’t. Perhaps like the rest of my family, you are actually just sitting by the pool relaxing with a glass of Rosé.
I however must pick myself up from this total and public mental collapse. I have a family to feed and so it’s back to the house to make what must be the baptism of any Sicilian holiday; spaghetti al sugo. This makes a romantic evening; it’s loved ones united by tomato sauce around a dining table, it’s babies clenching at strands of spaghetti, it’s a long-awaited holiday in Italy.
Yet my confidence in the romance begins to dwindle, there’s a question. Why is this meal special here when its contents are imported like they would be to Peckham?
And if it were all made down the road, what tangible difference does that make?
The latter question is far too philosophical for me to answer, though the former can actually get worse upon further reflection. This business of availability is a result of the globalisation of products, however there is something even more devastating to our search for something sacred and unique; the globalisation of knowledge.
This results in not only being able to find good Italian produce in England, but find it can even be made better! As I thumbed through photos of restaurant after restaurant in our nearest Sicilian town, I found little that could compare to the plates of pasta I drooled over in many of my favourite spots back home.
Shocking, I know, but true.
I reflected on these changing times amongst the definitively unchanging Greek ruins near Agrigento. Quite fittingly, I also reflected over them while eating an arancini. And perhaps it was this wisdom of the ancients seeping from the temples, or perhaps in chewing through the crisp clarity of that perfect rice ball snack, that I finally found the answer I was looking for.
You see it’s the ubiquity of it all, that’s the key. Sure I can find an arancini or plate of pasta con le sarde in England, but can I find them in an airport, at a gas station, next to a ruin of a temple from 3000 years ago? The magic is that everywhere I go in Sicily, there will be pasta alla norma, aubergines alla parmigiana, aubergine caponata, and hell it may not be the best I’ve ever had, but it will be good goddamnit, and unavoidable, always nipping at my heels like that scene where Indiana Jones runs from the boulder, except that I am now Indiana Jones, and the boulder has become a giant aubergine.
And with that realisation I could relax. Learning from the mozzarella at the centre of the arancini, I melted into my surroundings. The trip was no longer about finding the best (though I’m sure with better research it does exist), no longer about finding meaning in singular delights unique to the island, but instead basking in its collective delights that make the island singular.
So to display my gratitude to the enlightening arancini, there is only one recipe that can be at the heart of today’s newsletter:
Artichoke lasagne.
Just kidding…
Arancini alla Samuele
Making arancini is a four step process. It consists of making a risotto of sorts, making a filling, forming your balls and breadcrumbing them. The first two steps are where the potential for endless variation lie, and I prefer to leave all the thought required for that to the street vendors.
For the home cook, there is only one time to make arancini and that is when you have leftover risotto. This is also why the home cook should always make more risotto than they can eat so that quick and easy arancini await them the following day. This though naturally presumes the home cook exercises some restraint and does not eat the extra portion they cooked there and then.
My formula for arancini is most often “whatever risotto is left over” + "a few extra little cubes of cheese for filling” + “make ball” + “breadcrumb”. This presents the path of least resistance, falling neatly into the cadence of one’s weekly cooking and what lies in the fridge and at any given point in time.
However this post requires a recipe and so here is one of my favourite preparations, cheddar arrancini. Before you scoff at this sudden blasphemous fusion, let us take a moment to reflect that Sicily imports it’s rice from Lombardy (almost equidistant from UK) and that these were even different countries a mere 170 years ago. Today’s invention is tomorrow’s tradition!
I am also working under the advice of Alessandro Pace, the Sicilian who won Gambero Rosso’s estemeed “Best Arancini in Italy award.” When asked how to make the best arancini, he responded that the “ingrediente fondamentale is upholding a responsibility to your region.” In our case this is to green England, and to the best cheese in the world; cheddar.
If you don’t eat the risotto as a lunch the first day (which I advise you to), the below would make roughly 9 arancini.
The Risotto
500g carnoli or arborio rice
80g butter
Good stock or water
A few strands of saffron
200g cheddar
“Risotto is only as good as the stock it’s cooked in,” goes the old adage. I agree and therefore find myself unwilling to compromise with stock cubes or powders or weak vegetable stocks. If not at hand (which is often), I instead resort to water and appreciate the quite lovely and delicate starchy flavour of the rice with the sharpness of the cheddar.
Toast your risotto on medium heat for a few minutes in a large pan that will fit the final amount. You want the rice to go hot to the touch and start smelling fragrant, but not to cook or burn. Toasting will stop your rice from sticking and brings out fragrance.
Now add enough hot stock/water to cover by an inch or so with a teaspoon of salt and the saffron. Let bubble gently and stir intermittently. Top up with stock as necessary and cook until al dente (somewhere around 20 minutes).
In the meantime chop your butter into smallish cubes and grate the cheddar. When the risotto is done take off the heat, stir it all in vigorously, like your life depends on it becoming totally silky and homogenous within a matter of seconds. If it looks dry, add more stock/water and stir again. Put a lid on and allow to rest for a minute or two before serving.
The Arancini
Leftover risotto (or if using freshly cooked, allow to rest a few hours)
Cheddar cheese
1 egg
Flour
Breadcrumbs (Panko is good if you don’t make your own)
1L vegetable oil
Worcester sauce?
Cut some extremely good quality and very mature cheddar cheese into ~1cm cubes. Set up three bowls so that one has a beaten egg in it, one has flour, and one has the breadcrumbs.
With that done we can move on to shaping your balls.
Arancini means “little oranges” so this is the size we are going for. Of course “how little is a little orange?” and ‘how big is the orange that you are now making little?” are perfectly valid questions, but you’ll have to trust your gut on this one.
Grab some risotto in one hand and form a crater, into which you then place some cubes of your cheese (some frozen peas could also be a nice addition here).
Cover the crater with another bit of risotto and pat smooth so it’s a nice ball. Repeat this process until you have all your balls lined up.
Breadcrumbing is the fun bit. Dip each ball in the bowl filled with flour and make sure it is nicely dusted all over, then into the egg, ensuring it is dunked evenly, and finally roll in the breadcrumbs. Put the balls on a plate peppered with a few more crumbs and repeat with the rest. Once all done, you can allow them to rest for 30 minutes or so, which helps the coating stick (though it will be fine if you don’t).
In a pan that can incorporate a few balls at a time, add 1l of oil (or however much is needed so that the arancini will be submerged) and bring to a low temperature where a few breadcrumbs gently fry in it. We don’t want to cook on high heat as otherwise the outside will burn before the inside cooks and the cheese melts.
Lower your arancini in with care and allow to cook for 10 minutes or until they are beautiful and golden on the outside.
pull out and drain on kitchen towel, serve hot, hot, hot and enjoy preferably with cold beer and warm friends, and maybe if your particularly so inclined, with a splosh of Worcester sauce…
What a terrific insight - it's the quotidian ubiquity, the commonplace experience of foods sought out as specialties back home, that says 'welcome, you are somewhere else entirely'. (That and the heat, the scents, the blue skies and the language of course). That one may eat a finer preparation of a Sicilian dish in Peckham is, as you say, a testimony to the internet and the information revolution we are so fortunate to live within. Cheddar in risotto flows naturally from such an insight. What will come next? I must wait.