It was horribly cold tonight. I had no intention of going out shopping so I ransacked the fridge and pantry instead. I have no idea how this happens when I dutifully write a meal plan and shopping list every week, but I digress. So we had risotto cakes all wrapped up in proscuitto and served with sweet balsamicky tomatoes and rocket.

This recipe is an easy one, and very quick if you happen to have some left-over plainish risotto in the fridge. I never seem to, we’re both far too fat and far too fond of risotto.

At any rate this makes a nice dinner party entree with a little “here’s some I prepared earlier” magic. On a weeknight it is far more important to make sure your husband knows exactly how long you’ve been standing in front of the stove.

You’ll need a couple of cups of cooked risotto to serve 4 as an entree or 2 as a main. If you’re starting from scratch now, you want a basic risotto base. Anything too complicated will get lost when you turn the risotto into cakes and fry them.

My basic risotto starts with a cup of arborio rice (carnaroli is better, but I always only seem to have arborio in the pantry), a small brown onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, butter and olive oil, white wine and chicken or vegetarian stock. Homemade stock has a far superior flavour but if you’ve got some tetra packs of stock in the pantry then use them, I do.

Simmer the stock (about 5 cups should do it) and keep warm on the stove over a low heat.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pan with the chopped garlic and then add the onion, finely chopped, to soften. Don’t brown it. Add the rice at lowish heat and toast it, stirring, until covered in the oil and butter and you can hear the rice start to crack. Add about 1/4 cup of white wine now, stirring until mostly absorbed. Add another 1/4 cup of wine for the pot and a glass for you.

Now gradually add the stock to the rice, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring as you go. Add more stock as it gets absorbed and continue until the rice gets fat and swollen and lovely. You want the risotto to be al dente and creamy. Add a few good handfuls of freshly grated parmesan (the powder in the green tin is not parmesan, it is dirty sock scrapings) and season well.

Stir through some fresh breadcrumbs and put the risotto in the fridge to cool while you prepare the other bits and pieces to go with it. (If you use dried breadcrumbs the roof probably won’t cave in and I won’t tell on you.)

I’m pretty sure the tomatoes are originally from a Delicious magazine recipe.

You’ll need a couple of roma tomatoes, quartered. Seal them on each cut side in a frypan over high heat, then add 1 TB of brown sugar, 2 TB balsamic vinegar, a tsp of Worcestershire sauce and a TB of water. Drop the heat to low, pop the lid on and cook for a few minutes.

While that’s happening, mix an egg into the risotto mixture and divide into 4 or 6 cakes, depending on how much risotto you have. You don’t want arancini size for this, but you don’t want them to be so big and cumbersome that they will fall apart when you put them into the pan. Wrap each cake in a few pieces of proscuitto. A few sage leaves can work nicely with this too.

Shallow fry the cakes in a bit of oil for a few minutes either side in a frypan over medium heat, until the cakes are golden and the proscuitto is crisping.

Serve the cakes over some nice peppery rocket and top with the tomatoes and some shaved parmesan and pretend that it was hard work.