Gabe has been putting in requests for more risotto since I made the zucchini version about a year ago, and I've been wanting to try to make arancini for a long time as well. You're going to be spending a long time over a pot of hot oil if you want to make your entire risotto batch into arancini, so I recommend cooking it for dinner one night and using the leftovers for arancini the next day. I added peas and asparagus to my non-arancini risotto and fed it to a gluten-free friend in place of the birthday pastas. The invented dressing here was also highly successful, and lots of people asked for the recipe, which didn't exist at the time... so here it is!
Basic Awesome Risotto
2 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
1-2 medium onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
5-6 cups liquid*
~1/4 cup mascarpone (or ~1/4 c cream cheese or ~2 tbs butter)
Parmesan cheese to taste
Optional stir-ins of your choice: steamed asparagus, defrosted peas, sauteed mushrooms or spinach, etc.
*at least 4 cups of your liquid should be vegetable broth or chicken broth if you want it to taste good. if you have some on hand, using about 1 cup of white wine is also delicious. the rest can be water.
Put all of your liquid in a big pot on the stove and heat it up to very hot, but not boiling.
Heat up your butter and oil together in a non-stick pot. add the onion and some salt and pepper and saute until translucent. Add the garlic and cook another minute or so. Add the rice and saute until golden and toasty-smelling (not brown).
Start adding your liquid to the rice one big ladelful at a time. Stir it in (make sure you scrape the bottom of the pot for stuck rice), and then wait for it to absorb. then add another ladelful. repeat and repeat. when you're most of the way through your liquid, start checking the rice for doneness. it should be soft, but not disintegrated into a big pile of mush. When it's done stop adding liquid and take it off the heat.
Stir in mascarpone, creamcheese, or butter to your desired consistency. Add in parmesan to taste (don't go crazy and make it taste exclusively like parmesan, as some crappier versions do). Adjust the salt and pepper. Stir in whatever (pre-cooked) vegetables you desire, and enjoy!
Arancini
~1 cup leftover risotto
2 eggs
flour
breadcrumbs
lots of oil for frying
Beat one of the eggs into your leftover risotto. Put the second egg into a bowl and beat lightly. Put a few tbs of flour on a plate and the breadcrumbs on a second plate. Heat up your oil until a piece of bread or dough dropped into into float to the surface fairly quickly and gets dark brown in about 1-2 minutes. Roll the risotto into balls about 1" in diameter, roll in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs, and drop into the oil and fry. You want to make sure they're spending sufficient time in the oil to heat up the center - they should be dark on the outside. Blot on papertowel and serve with tomato sauce or in a salad with a dressing like the one that follows!
Tomato-Basil Dressing
1 small onion, diced
1 package cherry tomatoes
~1/4 cup red wine vinegar
~1/2 cup olive oil
a big handful of basil
salt & pepper to taste
Heat up a bit of oil in a pan and saute your onions until they're translucent. Toss in the cherry tomatoes and saute until they start to break down, pressing them with your mixing spoon to hurry the job. Keep cooking until everything is a little bit caramelized. Transfer to a food processor or blender, add some red wine vinegar, and mix until smooth. Now add the basil, olive oil, and salt and pepper and blend again. Taste and adjust - mine was really thick with the original amount of vinegar and oil I used, so I kept adding more and I'm not sure what the final amounts were. It's also going to taste more like tomato sauce as long as it's warm, so adjust the levels of everything again after it's been refrigerated for a while. Serve on a substantial salad (e.g. with mozzarella hunks or arancini).
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