Oxtail Arancini
At Three Little Birds I enjoy taking traditional Jamaican recipes and thinking of new ways of presenting them to my customers. A couple weeks ago I was playing around with a concept for “Rice & Peas” and I had some leftover risotto, which brought me back to my first taste of suppli in Rome. Suppli and arancini are similar Italian risotto balls but the former are normally smaller and filled with cheese instead of meat ragu. Considering we currently have oxtail ragu on the menu I thought that using the oxtail (minus the tomato sauce) combined with the leftover risotto would make for a perfect bitesize tasty morsel and I wasn’t wrong.
Oxtail Ragu at Three Little Birds, London
Very often I send pictures to some of my friends entitled “my lunch is better than yours” and this appetiser was no different. Yes I said appetiser as when I am inspired and have the time, my lunch will often span over a couple hours and include a starter, main and dessert depending on how far my imagination chooses to wander. After devouring two of these oxtail arancini, lunch continued with duck breast and couscous salad but I’ll leave that for another post.
Oxtail Arancini
Anyway, I love experimenting with Jamaican spices and other cuisines; this oxtail arancini recipe is an example of fusion at its best. If you’re not sure how to make Jamaican oxtail my recipe is here, and for risotto you can use this one just don’t use shrimp and asparagus.
Live, Love, Eat!
April x
Oxtail Arancini
Ingredients
- 2 cups leftover plain risotto
- 1/2 cup cooked oxtail deboned & chopped
- 100 grams parmesan cheese grated
- 2 eggs
- 1.5 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1 cup plain flour
- cooking oil
Instructions
- Pour vegetable oil into a deep pan and place over high heat.
- In the meantime whisk eggs in one shallow dish, put breadcrumbs in another shallow dish and plain flour in another.
- Mix leftover risotto, oxtail and parmesan cheese in a bowl and create balls that fit comfortably in your palm (approximately 2 inch diameter).
- Dip the balls first in flour, then egg and finally breadcrumbs.
- Drop a breadcrumb in the oil to test it is hot (it should sizzle)
- Then place balls in the hot oil for 6 minutes or until golden. Using a slotted spoon remove them from the oil and onto kitchen towel before serving with a tomato sauce or homemade mayonnaise.
