Three Layer Cake

Pisciarelli is a medieval town 10 minutes from Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. Its 500 inhabitants have a choice of five eating establishments which serve full meals. You won't stumble upon this pizzeria, though. The pizza is like any pizza you'll find around. The supplì, however, are unique. The prices are right. If you ever want to try it out, call me, or call Agnese, the owner. She'll give you directions. She also gave me this recipe.

For Dan and Martin to eat with their Pizza Napoli. No night at the pizzeria is complete without a supplì.

If you know how to make risotto, this will be easy for you. If you don’t know how to make risotto, you’ll have to learn to make these correctly. A supplì is a common part of pizzeria fare, served as an antipasto. They are most commonly made with a risotto-type base that essentially has some ragù mixed in, with a grape-sized ball of mozzarella in the middle. It is oblong in shape, not too fat in the middle and not too big (to facilitate frying), but you can find them pretty big. When they get really big and round, they are called arancini (little oranges). At La Muratella there are 8 or 10 different types of supplì.

1 small onion
1 small stick of celery
1 small carrot
80g sausage
300g carnaroli (or Arborio) rice
2 envelopes of saffron
½ cup white wine
1 litre of chicken broth
handful of parmesan
150g mozzarella
2 eggs
fine breadcrumbs, lots
oil for frying

Finely chop the onion, celery, and carrot. Sauté in oil until translucent.
Remove the casing from the sausage and add sausage in pieces to pan.
Brown the sausage.
Add the rice and mix to cover well with oil.
Dilute the saffron in a small amount of water and add to the rice.
Add white wine, and mix slightly so that the rice doesn’t stick. Cook until wine evaporates.
Begin to make the risotto by adding broth one ladle at a time.
Once the broth is absorbed, add another ladle.
(If this were a normal risotto you would continue this method of cooking the rice by slowly adding broth until
the rice were the right consistency. But because this rice must be fried after this procedure, you will stop
cooking the rice when it is still slightly crunchy, and the frying will complete the cooking.)
Mix in the parmesan.

Spread the rice onto a platter to allow it to cool completely.
With wet hands take a small bit of rice, place a grape-sized piece of mozzarella in an indentation in the rice, and cover with another bit of rice to form what resembles a jumbo egg sized ball, which you will elongate some.
Roll the ball in the egg, then the breadcrumbs.
Fry the supplì in batches of 3 or 4.
Drain on paper towel.

Try making other varieties of supplì fashioned after your favourite risotto. If you are using vegetables (like red and yellow peppers, or asparagus), you should sauté them separately and puree them and add them to the rice mixture toward the end of cooking.

Too complicated? Visit Agnese. La Muratella, Piazza S. Lorenzo, Pisciarelli. +39 06 9988313. Closed Mondays, open only for dinner.