At the cafe Ke Palle Arancine d’Autore, chef Guiseppe Di Forti rolls and deep-fried balls of gooey, cheesy, parboiled rice to make arancine, a street food favorite in Sicily. It is “perhaps the queen of Sicilian street food,” says Di Forti.
While traditional arancine consists of just rice, cheese, and tomato sauce, Di Forti serves a variety of the cheesy fried rice balls — which might be stuffed with meat, tomato, eggplant, or other ingredients — to expand its appeal. “We really wanted to create an international product from the Sicilian tradition, by adding these new flavors, because currently the tradition was static, stationary,” he says.
Watch the full video to see how Di Forti and the team at Ke Palle Arancine d’Autore make their own riffs of the Sicilian street food classic.