Risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella, deep-fried, served with tomato sauce. These are traditional rice croquettes coming from Rome, from Lazio region in Italy. It is a finger food - when one croquette is cut into two pieces, melted mozzarella looks like telephone overhead line between two poles. Hence the name suppli al telefono. You can serve them with tomato sauce. If you can't buy good tomatoes, you can use tinned tomatoes.
Ingredients:
Tomato sauce:
• 2 tbs clarified butter
• 500 g fresh, peeled and chopped tomatoes
(or tinned tomatoes)
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• sea salt
Risotto:
• 500 ml vegetable stock
(I have used frozen, but you can use stock cube)
• 40 g butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 160 g risotto rice
• 2 tbs freshly grated parmigiana
• 50 ml dry white wine
• sea salt and freshly grated black pepper
Croquettes:
• 1 big egg, lightly whisked
• 100 g soft mozzarella finely chopped
(this time I used mozzarella with truffles
found recently in a shop - delicious!)
• 2 slices of a good ham cut into strips
• breadcrumbs
• frying oil
• salt
Preparation:
Prepare risotto. Warm up stock and keep on a low heat. In a pan melt half of butter and add onion. Fry until soft. Add rice, stir and fry until sizzling. Add wine and cook until it reduces. Add a ladle of stock, stir until it is absorbed. by the rice. Continue until you use up whole stock and rice becomes soft and creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add remaining butter and parmigiana . Stir. Cover a pan and put aside for few minutes. Remove a pan until it cools down.
Prepare tomato sauce. In a big pan heat clarified butter, add garlic, oregano and tomatoes. Stir for about 8 minutes until sauce gets thick and shiny. Add salt. Put it to a container and blend until puréed. Put aside. Add an egg to risotto. Stir thoroughly and put aside until completely cool.
Scoop risotto with a large spoon and using your wet fingers shape it into an egg . As you can see on the pictures - I prefer to prepare balls. Shape a hole and put a piece of mozzarella, wrapped with a ham strip. Stick croquette's endings together and put into breadcrumbs. Prepare the rest of the croquettes using this method.
Heat oil in a deep frying pan. If you have a deep fryer - best if you use it to fry the rice croquettes. Fry suppli until dark brown. Dry on a paper towel. Add some salt and serve with warm tomato sauce.
Enjoy!
