As you can see from my previous post, last night we had our tropical Cuban feast. There was obviously too much food, though we were starving Matt and I only made a dent in the dishes. So what is the money conscious college couple to do? Make deep fried rice balls with the leftover coconut rice. Duh.
Take said fantastic leftover rice out of the fridge. If you do not have rice in your fridge from a previously cooked feast (hopefully my Cuban tropical feast), please make some rice, and take it out of the pot.
Make sure your rice is somewhat sticky/starchy. Cause now you are going to roll it into compact little balls – if they somewhat resemble a large spit wad – you’re doing it right.
(The brown spot on the middle ball is a few grains of rice with cinnamon on them, not gross. Promise).
Take your little rice balls and let them soak for a quick second in this 2 egg, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 tablespoon milk concoction.
Then let them have a roll in the bread crumbs (not the hay).
Place your battered and crumbed rice balls into your deep fryer. If you are not an awesome girlfriend who bought her boyfriend a deep fryer for Christmas, who has a boyfriend kind enough to bring said deep fryer over from his house for this purpose, then simply put your rice balls in a pot of oil on the stove.
Drop the grate into the oil. (Paula Deen’s second favorite artery clogger).
(Not the greatest video, but if you would like to watch the whole SNL skit – and let me tell you, you would like to watch the whole skit – go here).
Let the balls fry for just a few minutes. Once you take them out, let ‘em soak “like a frog on a log” on a few paper towels. A little less oil does a lot of good.
Then place them on a plate and garnish the plate with a swirl of Mae Ploy, the glory that is sweet chili sauce.
Matt’s artistic genius came alive with Mae Ploy. Yours can too. Get some today!
(I could really be in advertising, huh?)
Now as I previously stated, we are college kids on a budget. WE AREN’T GOING TO WASTE OIL!
So we made sure we used the oil to its full potential – by making mozzarella sticks. Holler at me.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “Wait, what? Is this dream team for real?!”
The answer is yes. We are loud. We are proud. And we love our fried foods.
For these lovely cheesy sticks. Start with your favorite brand of string cheese.
Cut them in half. After you take the wrapper off of course.
I hope none of you were fooled, or satisfied (god forbid), with generic mozzarella sticks. Oh NO! You better believe I was inspired by my favorite bacon obsessed Canadian men. In addition to the bread crumbs, we rolled them in homemade chip crumbs.
Go to 1:30 to see what I mean. Then start from the beginning and watch the whole thing.
So, you are going to want to have your roommate’s boyfriend smash chips with a meat tenderizer against your fridge.
Geno is spicy, like the Kettle Brand Jalapeno chips.
For variety we also crushed Doritos for crumbs. Not mixed together – though cheesy jalapeno sounds scrumptious – we made some of each instead.
Funny how few crumbs there are, considering this was the big bag of chips.
Repeat the steps for the rice balls. You remember right? Batter, bread crumbs. Except with the cheese sticks the process should go like this:
1.batter
2.bread crumbs
3.back in the batter
4.back in the bread crumbs
5.one last time in the batter
6.finally cool enough for the chip crumbs
7. then into the deep fryer
Place in an artistic evenly spaced circular shape around a small colorful bowl of marinara sauce.
Presto!
Both the rice balls and the mozzarella sticks were beyond words delicious. The balls were crunchy on the outside, sweet and soft on the inside. The Mae Ploy was the cherry, I mean chili, on top.
The mozzarella sticks had undeniable crunch from the chips and the layers of bread crumb beneath the chippy crust immensely helped in retaining that mysterious salty liquid that oozes out of mozzarella cheese. You know the juiciness that keeps you from choking on the crumbs. Basically it was a beautiful experience.
Oh and in case you were wondering who this famed dream team is. Here we are, in all our glory.
Workin’ the camera while workin’ a burrito. Talent.
Pixi Stick before dinner. Classic.
