Orengini

When I lived in Japan, my friend Maria who lived about 4 hours away from me made this recipe, sorta.  Hers was a little bit different.  I tried to replicate it when I came back to the United States.  However, it was too difficult for me.  She add vegetables and sauce inside her orengini.  Our rice balls kept falling apart when we tried frying them with the stuff inside.  Since then, we removed this step to make it work.  I misunderstood the name of this traditional Italian dish.  I thought Maria said orengini, but in fact it's called "arancini'.  Since the recipe is slightly different from the true arancini recipe, we kept the name orengini.  I suppose this is a good representation of how things change in time!  Essentially, orengini is like risotto.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups uncooked sticky rice
• 1-2 eggs
• Bread crumbs (about one cup)
• Marinara sauce (one full jar)
• Vegetable oil
• Cheddar or mozzarella cheese

Preparation:

1.  Cook rice  

2.  Beat up the eggs in a bowl that is convenient to roll around the rice ball

3.  Place one cup of bread crumbs into another bowl that is convenient to roll the rice ball in 

4.  Heat up the oil when rice is nearly done cooking. 

Process

1.   After rice is done cooking, mix in cheddar cheese or mozzarella cheese (cheddar gives a better taste)

      *if using non-sticky rice, you definitely need to add  cheese to make the rice sticker to remain in ball shape

2.  Make the rice/cheese into a ball a little larger than a golf ball

3.  Roll balled rice around in beat-up egg

4.  Roll balled rice around carefully in bread crumbs.  Carefully take out the ball with a spoon.

5.  Place breaded balled rice into hot oil until bread crumbs are well cooked and remove from oil (about 2 minutes on each side)

6.  Heat marinara sauce

Serving:

1.  Place rice ball on a plate

2. Place the heated marinara sauce over the ball

3.  Add mozzarella cheese on top