LIVE TO COOK

No! No! I am not going to cook with the monkeys. But they are the inspiration for this post. These are the famous “Three Wise Monkeys” that symbolizes the saying “Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil“. These are Mahathma Gandhiji’s favorites. I got a new meaning for these symbols through my family.

Some days, my little son will refuse to eat his soup and rice. In spite of my trials and the bribes, he will take the posture of the third monkey, the speak no evil. I will call the pose, “Rice. Yuk! What else can she make!”.

After fixing something other than rice for my kid, I will turn to my DH. He knows very well that I will ask him to have rice for dinner otherwise it will get wasted. Willing to have something other than rice for dinner, DH will take the posture of the first monkey, the hear no evil. Though he won’t keep his hands on ears, he won’t listen to my pleadings. So I will call this pose, “Did I hear something?!..that voice seems to be fake!”.

Between these two, I am forced to take the pose of the monkey in the middle, the see no evil. I will call this pose, “Oh! give me a break for god’s sake!”.

Finally, I found some recipes to solve this “Make, Fake and Sake” situation. Suppli is one such recipe from Italy. This is a fried rice balls recipe. Though most of the recipe instructions call for deep frying the rice balls, the one that is in my recipe collection calls for browning the rice balls in oven. I browned it in the toaster oven.

Ingredients:

2 Cups cooked rice

2 1/2 Cups Tomato – Vegetable sauce

3 Tbsp Gram flour (Use 3 egg yolks instead)

2 Tbsp Cheese of your choice

1 tsp salt

Method:

1. Take the rice in a large bowl. Place a sieve or colander on top of the rice. Pour the tomato sauce on it. Press to push the liquids and strain the large pieces of vegetables.

2. Save the strained vegetables separately.

3. Add other ingredients to the rice and mix well.

4. Take a handful of rice mixture and shape into a disc. Place small amount of vegetables in the middle.

5. Cover and shape into balls.

6. Place in a greased oven proof dish.

7. Brown in 400F oven for 30 minutes or until the top is browned a bit. I browned the rice balls in a toaster oven.

8. Serve as is or pour sauce on top.

In the end we were going bananas for suppli.

This is my entry for the “A.W.E.D – Italian” Event hosted by DK.