Suppli

On the streets of Rome, you can duck into a pizzeria or Roman fast food shop and find suppli. They deep fried rice balls in which a chunk of mozzarella has been inserted. This past weekend, Anna made a huge batch of them for the annual school picnic. It was my first cooking lesson from Anna.

Anna has the bowl of rice already made. It's rice, tomato sauce (optional) and raw egg. The guy on the left is Charles, her host kid from three years ago who is going to school in Rome and was up for the afternoon visiting.

Take a scoop of rice, stick a chunk of mozzarella in the middle and squeeze to make as tight as possible. Then cover it in breadcrumbs.

The suppli are now ready to be deep fried in hot oil.

Everything is better deep fried. Alas, my suppli were not compact enough and broke apart during the deep fry. Therefore, Anna had to bake them to get them to stay together for the deep fry. Too many hands in the kitchen.....

Suppli are also commonly known as Suppli di telefono because if you break them apart, the two ends are the receiver and handset of a telephone and cheese, strung out looks like the cord.