[Sca-cooks] Arancini, deep-fried Sicilian goodness.

[Ariane H]

christianetrue at earthlink.net wrote:

>Apparently this is a traditional Sicilian street food. Arabs introduced the combination of rice and saffron. Even better, I didn't have to translate this one:
>
>Ingredients
>500gr of rice,  100gr butter,  100gr parmesan cheese,  nutmeg, saffron, parsley,  meat stock,  1 chopped onion,  100gr chopped ham,  100gr peas,  1 glass white wine,  flour,  1 beaten egg,  grated bread,  olive oil for frying,  salt and pepper.   
>
><snip recipe>
>In America, ground beef has been used as an acceptable and tasty substitute, but the ham-pea combination feels more "period" to me.
>
>"Arancini" means "oranges," by the way, a very descriptive name for the color the saffron and the frying gives the rice.
>
>Gianotta
>

I've had arancini before, they're excellent!  And check this out - I was 
just looking through Scappi (Venice, 1570) and found what looks like the 
period version (and sweet rather than savory) of this dish:

Per fare fritelle di Riso.  Cap. CXLII [Libro Quinto]
Cuocanosi libre due di riso con brodo grasso di carne, overo con latte 
di capra, o di vacca, & zuccaro in modo che sia ben sodo; cavisi del 
vaso, & lascisi raffreddare, pestisi nel mortaro con libra una di cascio 
grasso, quattro oncie di zuccaro, & ott' ova fresche, & d'essa 
compositione faccianosene palle, infarinisino in fior di farina, & poi 
frigghisino nel strutto, e fritte che saranno si servino calde con 
succaro sopra.

To make rice fritters.
Let two pounds of rice be cooked with rich meat broth, or else with 
goat's milk, or cow's milk, and sugar in a way that it becomes quite 
solid; pour it into a bowl, and let it cool, then let it be pounded in a 
mortar with a pound of fat cheese, four ounces of sugar, and eight fresh 
eggs, and let balls be made out of this mixture, floured in wheat flour, 
and then fried in lard, and when they are fried let them be served hot 
with sugar on top.


On a tangential note:  I decided that I am in fact going to tackle the 
project of translating the Scappi book...I started a couple weeks ago 
and it's going quite a bit faster than I'd expected.  I just started at 
the beginning and am slowly making my way through...I intend to work 
chronologically, although over the next couple weeks I'll be translating 
some stuff out of sequence, for a school project.

I would like to put the translation on the web, even as a 
work-in-progress, because I know this book isn't widely available, and I 
bet enough people would be interested in using it that it would be 
worthwhile.  (I, for one, have been trying to get a copy of this book 
for a few years now and am pretty ecstatic to finally be working with 
it.)  Ideally, I will eventually have my own website, so that I can make 
updates and corrections as frequently as I need to, but given my 
technological ineptitude, that isn't happening anytime soon.   (Stefan, 
you mentioned a while ago that you've hosted cookbook translations in 
the Florilegium before - could Scappi have a temporary home there, 
too?)  It's not too urgent an issue since I haven't gotten to the 
recipes yet, just the introductory chapters, but I would really like to 
make the translation available in one way or another, and I'm interested 
in whatever possibilities exist....

thanks,

Vittoria