These highly crunchable cheesy bread balls are a great way to use up odds and ends

Sadly, I’m never going to be able to recreate the cheese and bread balls I made a few weeks ago, because, of the four cheeses used, I recognised only two of them: a bit of gorgonzola and a slice of precious Montgomery cheddar, bought from Da Corrado, a stall on Testaccio market. The other two lumps of cheese, both wrapped in white waxed paper and both quite dry, were, I think, a piece of grana padano and the end of the pecorino we brought back from Umbria. But I can’t be sure, because I didn’t really examine them. Even if I had, it would have been hard to guess; the description “heels of cheese” is appropriate here. What I do know, however, is that the combination of those four grated cheeses with two eggs and enough breadcrumbs to turn the mix into a soft, malleable dough made for fantastic deep-fried balls.

The inspiration for using up the uncertain contents of the cheese box was pallotte cacio e ova, which translates as “little cheese and egg balls”, a typical and much-loved thing in both Molise and Abruzzo, which were, in fact, one region until 1964. Pallotte are resourceful, and were surely invented as a way of using up scraps of cheese (almost certainly local pecorino) and bread. Whatever combination of cheese you use, though, the important thing is to add enough soft white breadcrumbs – anything from 80g to 120g – to turn the mixture into a soft dough that you can then mould into balls, but not so compactly that the tenderness is lost. Like meatballs, cheese balls benefit from a rest in the fridge, so they can firm up before frying. The rest in the fridge also ensures that they are cold, which is important, because the thermal shock of the cold surface meeting the hot oil helps create a crisp shell.

Nutty in flavour and creamy in texture, autumn’s bounty of squash and pumpkin has many uses, both sweet and savoury

The shops are heaving with pumpkins and squash, and though there are so many different varieties to choose from, most of them are interchangeable. My favourites are kabocha, crown prince and delicata, for their deeply nutty flavour and creamy texture, plus they hold their shape well when roasted or braised. And if you’re carving a pumpkin for Halloween over the coming weeks, don’t waste the flesh: chop it up and throw into a risotto. It’s hard to imagine that such deliciousness could come from such a ghoulish grimace.