A recipe – Arancini with sweet red pepper & smoked scamorza

A tradition

As I come from Napoli, one of the ‘street food’ items that I most love is arancini, rice balls. We call them arancini in Napoli, in other parts of Italy they change gender and become arancine, and have different versions. From the massive rice balls eaten in Sicily, full to the brim with mince meat ragu and peas (the best in my childhood memory used to be on the ferry between mainland and the island, believe it or not!), to the small, bite size no tomato sauce version found in Napoli’s friggitories, regional variations are found everywhere.

I love them and so does my husband, yet I had only attempted once years ago to disastrous results and never tried again. A few months ago I attended a rice masterclass with Danilo Cortellini, head chef of the Italian Embassy and following his guidance, I then felt confident to try them again myself. Using Danilo’s base recipe (also included in his first book 4 Grosvenor Square dedicated to the Embassy’s menus and dishes), I tried some different fillings I thought would work well.

I was really pleased with the results, not only on the flavour combination which brings together the sweetness of romesco peppers, the bright colours of the tomato sauce and the smokiness of scamorza, again flavours I am so familiar with from growing up in the Med. I order the scamorza from Nife is Life.

Below the recipe for my sweet and smokey version of these mouthwatering mini bites. As you can see the kitchen can get a little messy! But it’s so worth it.

The recipe

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