Squid ink Arancini in Bloody Mary sauce

Start by gently heating the stock in a pan. Peel and finely chop the onion, garlic and celery and fry off in a separate pan for about 15 minutes with oil and 1 small knob of butter over a low heat. You are aiming to soften them without any colour. Once soft, add the rice and turn up the heat – the rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After 1 minute it will look slightly translucent. Add wine and keep stirring.

Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock from the other pan with a good pinch of sea salt. Turn the heat down to a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and massaging the creamy starch out of the rice. Allow each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes. Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Don’t forget to check the seasoning carefully. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water.

Remove the pan from the heat and add a knob of butter, squid ink and grated Parmesan. Stir well. Then place the lid on the pan and leave to cool down. The rice will become a little overcooked by traditional standards, but this works well for the Arancini. 

When properly cooled, take a handful and make a dent in the middle with your forefinger or thumb. Place the Snøfrisk^® inside and cover with more risotto. Shape into a ball. Repeat this until you’ve used all your risotto mixture. Do this first before you add the coating. Don’t worry about the traditional method of ‘pane’ (flour, egg and only then breadcrumbs) instead just dip between the crumbs and the egg until thoroughly covered.

Now it is time to make the Bloody Mary sauce. Feel free to leave out the vodka if you don’t drink. Heat the tomato juice separately, then add spices and the vodka later. If you heat everything at once, you’ll lose the flavour of everything and it will just taste of tomato juice. Toast and grind the spices then add to the lemon juice, Worcester and Tabasco. Grate a little horseradish into it at the end. Finely slice the preserved lemons and fry off the curly kale in butter, then toss in olive oil and add the lemons. Mix everything together and you’ve formed the sauce.

Place the Arancini in a deep fat fryer on a low heat (around 130°C) for about 15 min. If you don’t have a deep fat fryer, use a big saucepan and fill with oil and watch the temperature with a thermometer. Practice caution as you fry the balls. As they’re quite big, the heat needs to be low and long so you melt the cheese inside.

Serve hot with ample drizzles of the sauce and a sprinkle of Parmesan.