Savory Christmas Balls with Couscous

The keyword for this Christmas at the table? Impress! Here is a creative and surely impressive recipe: Savory Christmas Balls with Couscous. An excellent appetizer to start the Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas lunch. The recipe is by our Anna Attanasio, food blogger at Giallo Zafferano.

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium egg
  • 30 g of grated cheese
  • 1 pinch of fine salt 100 g of milk
  • 30 g of seed oil
  • 100 g of mozzarella or scamorza
  • 50 g of tomato paste
  • 50 g of hot water
  • 50 g of Martino organic whole wheat couscous
  • 130 g of all-purpose flour or cake flour
  • 8 g of baking powder for savory cakes
for decoration:
  • mayonnaise as needed
  • rosemary sprigs
  • red berries as needed

Preparation:

Pour the organic whole wheat couscous into a bowl, add a pinch of salt, the hot water, stir, cover, and let it rehydrate for 10 minutes. After the resting time, fluff it with a fork.
Crack the egg into a bowl and start mixing by adding the salt and grated cheese, then add the seed oil and tomato paste and continue mixing.
Add the flour and milk and mix again, then add the baking powder. Finally, add the diced or cubed scamorza or mozzarella and the couscous.
Transfer the mixture into a mold with 8 cm diameter hemispheres, filling the hemispheres up to 1 cm from the edge.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 15-20 minutes. Let the hemispheres cool, then trim the excess from the bottom to level the base, spread some mayonnaise on the cut part, and close each hemisphere with another hemisphere.
Decorate the surface of the spheres with mayonnaise, rosemary needles, and red berries.

WATCH THE FULL RECIPE VIDEO