Couscousit

I don't know about you guys, but I hate throwing away food. I even feel bad throwing away the white rice that comes with Chinese food. Not that it's any good the next day, but still, its a whole two cups of rice! And that's a lot of food...

All these food bloggers out there, many of which you have already seen me mention, will tell you about their great recipes for leftover rice, be it white rice or day old risotto, what have you. Adam makes a rice pudding with his leftover Chinese white rice, and Clotilde make rice cakes with leftover basmati. I, having just perused through my new Mario Batali cookbook, decided to make suppli' al telefono. These little guys are basically fried rice balls stuffed with some mozzarella cheese, and are very popular in Rome. They are called suppli' al telefono because when you bite them, the melted cheese flows out in a long string, like the wire that dangles from the receiver when you pick up the phone.

So with Mario's inspiration in my heart, to my carton of Chinese white rice I added fried onion and garlic (that I deglazed with white wine and some water in which I had soaked some dried porcini mushrooms), a whole lot of chopped Italian parsley, some parmigiano cheese, an egg or two and some salt and pepper. In another bowl, I chopped up some mozzarella cheese and the porcini mushrooms (which had soaked for about 20 minutes). Here is what the two mixtures looked like:

With wet hands, I scooped out some of the rice mixture, made an indent with my thumb, and stuffed in some of the cheese mixture. I rolled each into a ball, making sure the cheese was completely incased with the rice, sprinkled them with bread crumbs, and then added them (in phases) to a large saute pan in which I heated some olive oil. After browning on both sides, I transferred them to a plate lined with paper towel.

I ate them with some tomato sauce, and was a very very happy camper.

So the moral of the story is, there is always something you can make from your starchy leftovers. You can make a similar concoction with leftover mashed potatoes. You don't have to use mushrooms. You can do anything your want with them! Fried anything can never turn out badly. Trust.

# posted by Unknown @ 4:41 PM