VENICE CARNIVAL: FRITTELLE & GALANI

Today is Mardi Gras, which is the day of the year I traditionally spend sobbing in my pajamas because of homesickness. The reason? In Venice, today is the end of Carnevale ("Carnival" in English, if you seriously need a translation), my favorite celebration of all, and the one I miss the most since I've moved to the United States. Venice Carnival has been synonymous with great fun and great food since I was born. As a little girl, the fun consisted of wearing my chosen costume on multiple occasions—Venice Carnival lasts a little over two weeks—at school, on strolls around my town or in Venice, and at children's birthday parties. During each outing, us kids were allowed to throw confetti in each other's eyes and then litter the streets with colorful serpentine throws. To make things even more interesting, the right princess or pirate costume could grant you multiple fiancés by the age of 9. As a teenager and then young adult, the fun was pretty much the same, but it happened at night and was quite a bit boozier.

Now let's talk about the food. During Carnival, bakeries and pastry shops in Venice and the rest of the Veneto region start churning out an avalanche of amazing fried sweets, namely frittelle, galani, and castagnole. Venetians of all ages stuff their faces with these beloved sweets at all hours of the day. Let's see them in detail:

• Frittelle are little sweet and soft doughnuts with raisins and pine nuts and sometimes filled with crema pasticcera (pastry cream) or zabaione, and dusted in granulated or powdered sugar. They are the Holy Grail of Venice Carnival foods.
• Galani are paper-thin rectangles of lightly sweetened dough, deep-fried and dusted with powdered sugar.
• Castagnole are small round fried cookies very similar to shortbread. For some reason, they are the least popular among Carnival sweets, even though they are completely delicious in their own right. I am afraid they are unfairly obscured by their high-performing cousins (a phenomenon I will now call "Unfair Eclipse Syndrome").

To lessen my desperate homesickness and to share a little of the joy of Venice Carnival with my insatiable children, a couple of years ago Mr Bee and I started to make all these sweets at home with acceptable results. This year, however, we knocked one out of the proverbial ballpark by finally landing two perfect recipes for frittelle and galani that I want to share with you today. Get a Carnival mask on, hang some streamers around your house, gather friends and love interests, and deep-fry these gems: This is the closest you're going to get to my beloved Venice Carnival.

You can read more information about the history of Venice Carnival in this post I wrote for Multicultural Kid Blogs. 

FRITTELLE WITH CREMA

Makes 20–25 frittelle. Just remember crema is optional: Frittelle are amazing on their own.

Ingredients for crema pasticcera (pastry cream)

1/2 quart of milk (I would not use non-fat here)
lemon rind of half a lemon, cut in one piece (use a vegetable peeler)
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch

Ingredients for frittelle

oil for frying
1 ¼ cups water
pinch of salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp sugar (that's right)
1 ½ cups flour
6 eggs
orange rind (grated)
2 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup raisins
¼ pine nuts
oil for frying
granulated or powdered sugar for coating

Directions

Make the crema pasticcera

• Pour the milk in a saucepan, add the lemon rind, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat off and let rest for 10 minutes.
• In a bowl, whisk the egg yolk with the sugar together until pale yellow and fluffy.
• Add the cornstarch to the egg mixture and stir together.
• Remove the lemon rind from the milk, and pour the milk slowly into the egg mixture, stirring to prevent clumps.
• Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and let it thicken on low-medium heat until it reaches a creamy consistency. The crema will continue to thicken, so leave it somewhat runny.
• Let the crema cool down before using.

Make the frittelle

• Place water, butter, salt, and sugar in a small pan and bring to a boil.
• Add all the flour all at once and stir vigorously until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan to form a ball. This takes less than a minute.
• Let the dough cool, then add one egg at a time. Make sure each egg is incorporated into the dough before adding another one. (I’d use a electric mixer here, if possible. Unless you enjoy the arm workout, of course.)
• Mix in the the rest of the ingredients.
• Heat oil to 370F degrees and fry the dough in small balls (use two spoons) for 5–6 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked throughout. Note that frittelle will first puff a little and then puff up even more after a couple of minutes of more.
• Roll frittelle into granulated sugar or dust with powdered sugar.
• When cool, fill the frittelle with about a tablespoon of crema pasticcera each, depending on size. I used a whipped-cream syringe similar to this one but way crappier. If you don't have a syringe, I guess that you can cut the frittelle open and fill them with a tablespoon of cream.

*The usual optimal frying temperature is 375F, but that cooked our dough too quickly so it was burned on the outside and still raw on the inside. Five degrees made all the difference!

GALANI

Ingredients

oil for frying
4 eggs
4 cups flour
2 tbsp butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup sparkling water
grated lemon rind from one lemon
a pinch of salt
2 tbsp grappa (optional)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

• Mix the flour, sugar, and butter together until coarsely combined. You might want to use an electric mixer for this part, otherwise use your hands and be quick.
• Add the eggs, lemon rind, and salt, Grappa and vanilla and mix.
• Add sparkling water as needed and a little at a time until the dough becomes soft and stretchy. It should resemble fresh pasta dough, if that helps.
• Cover the dough and let it rest for an hour.
• Roll out the dough with a roller (champion) or with a pasta machine, going up to the smallest setting so that galani are paper-thin. If you've never used a pasta machine before, check out these instructions.
• Cut dough into large rectangles with a pasta cutter. (Parents of young children: I couldn't find mine once so I used a Play-doh cutter.) Rectangles should be about 2x4'', but can be VERY irregular, so don't worry too much about it. 
• Place rectangles on a floured kitchen towel.
• Fry the galani in 375 degree oil for a few seconds, or until slightly colored and puffed up. 
• Let rest on paper towels and dust with powdered sugar. Galani last beautifully for 2–3 days in a dry climate.

PIZZE FRITTE (DEEP-FRIED PIZZAS)

Last week I had my birthday. If you're dying to know, I turned 38, which apparently is considered the best age, at least according to this article I found by googling "38 is the best age". To celebrate, my dear husband fulfilled my dreams (and his) by getting me a deep-fryer. Of course, we had to put it to work right away, and the first dish that sprang to mind was deep-fried pizzas.

That's right: These are mini-calzones minimally filled and deep-fried. Please note this recipe is not a culinary junk dare like these deep-fried donut bacon cheeseburgers that I don't even want to comment on. It's actually inspired by a traditional Neapolitan recipe: the pizza fritta.

The original pizza fritta was born in the poor neighborhoods of Naples after the devastation of WWII. People could not afford pizza cooked in a wood-fire oven, so they started frying it in the streets instead. The pizzas were filled with ricotta and chitterlings, or left empty. In one my favorite movies, Vittorio De Sica's "L'Oro di Napoli" (The Gold of Naples) from 1954, you can see a young and impossibly beautiful Sophia Loren as a pizza fritta vendor. The pizza fritta is not as common today in its original form, but you can still find the calzone fritto: a whole calzone filled with ricotta, mozzarella, salami, and ham and deep-fried to perfection.

But back to my birthday. I have no illusion our deep-fried pizzas would compete with their Neapolitan inspiration, but they were super delicious: soft, chewy, salty, and not at all greasy. We filled them with mozzarella, a little bit of San Marzano tomato sauce, and fried eggplants. We didn't make the dough ourselves because, living in D.C., we are blessed with great ready dough from two delicatessens, Vace and The Italian Store. We used Vace this time, and were thrilled to try their own mozzarella, prepared in-store every day.

These pizzas are fairly easy to make, and definitely very fun for a Sunday with friends. Of course, this is if your guests don't mind the smell of fryer oil on their hair and clothes for a week. Present it as a party favor: You might get away with it.

D.C. people: Start frying.

PIZZE FRITTE

Makes 16 little fried pizzas.

3 quarts of frying oil (or 3 inches if you are doing it in a dutch oven over stove heat)
2 pizza dough disks

2 whole mozzarellas, cubed and drained for 10 min in a colander

1 1/2 C of tomato sauce (make your own with San Marzano tomatoes)
1 large eggplant, cubed and deep-fried
fresh basil leaves
EVOO
Salt
Pepper

• Heat the oil in your deep-fryer or dutch oven to 375 degrees.
• Cut each dough in 8 parts on a well floured surface (flour is your friend, it helps soften the dough and make it more elastic) and then flatten each mini-dough, starting from the center (about 4'' diameter). Be careful the dough doesn't tear. Use your hands here; using a rolling pin is not advised for pizza. (It will cause it to tear more easily.)
• On each pizza disc, place a small handful of mozzarella cubes, 1 tablespoon of tomato sauce, 1 tablespoon of fried eggplants, and a basil leaf.
• Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a little EVOO.
• Fold the dough over and press firmly to seal the pizzas into tiny calzones. It is important to create a good seal so the moisture from the cheese and sauce does not mix with the hot oil and splatter. 
• Deep-fry until the pizzas are puffed-up and golden, turning once, just under 2 minutes. 
• Serve immediately.

Note: These pizzas can be easily made vegan. Fill with tomato sauce, eggplant, olives, and everything you would like to see on pizzas with the exception of pineapples. 

Another note: Pizza fritta can also be made like this. My friend Checco makes this kind every year in Italy, and it's a celebration to remember. Just fry the open pizza dough and then spoon over tomato sauce and grated cheese.

A TRADITION IS MADE: BOMBE!

Nonna Rosalia, my paternal grandmother, was a great cook as most Italian grandmothers are. She was not, however, a traditional grandmother chained to the kitchen from dawn to dawn*. In fact, with her degree in Math obtained in Palermo in the Forties and her teaching job, she considered herself (and rightfully so) a modern, emancipated Italian woman. This also meant she liked to escape the dogmas of traditional Sicilian cooking and experiment with more modern recipes, mostly successfully. (Especially if I disregard her green-apple mousse that still counts as one of the most vile things I've ever ingested.) 

In the early 2000s, Nonna Rosalia acquired the recipe for Bombe, which are fried, savory doughnuts made with gnocchi dough and yeast and filled with mozzarella, prosciutto cotto (Italian ham), and mushroom. I was lucky enough to be there during the first preparation: Prepping the bombe's filling, waiting nervously as they rose under a kitchen towel, and tapping my foot and biting my lip with excited expectation as they finally rolled and puffed up in boiling oil. 

The bombe were a complete triumph: They were soft, not greasy, a perfect explosion of Italian comfort-food flavors. They forever hooked me, my sister, and our cousins from the very first bite. And thereafter we felt like bombe had been there for us all of our lives, fueling our physical and emotional growth, lovingly tying us to our family roots, reconnecting us to the best of our childhood, even though we were tasting them for the first time in our early twenties. Bombe became an instant family tradition, one that we begged Nonna Rosalia to bring back for birthdays and holidays, and one that now makes us immediately think of her now that she's no longer with us. 

Two months ago my second child was born, and my sister came to visit and help. She and I decided then to celebrate with a massive batch of bombe. They came out great, and it felt great to make them again. Here's the recipe.

BOMBE

1 packet active dry yeast
1 lb Russet potatoes
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 lb ham, shredded
1/2 lb mozzarella, cubed
1/2 cup cooked mushroom
enough oil for deep frying

• Activate the yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water.
• Boil the potatoes in salted water for 30 min, or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork. Let them cool to a reasonable temperature and peel them.
• Press the potatoes through a ricer into a large bowl. If you don't own a potato ricer, I hear you can use a grater and then fluff the grated potatoes with a fork.
• Add the flour, salt, yeast, and eggs until the dough is manageable and soft and comes together, but is still a little sticky. If you've ever made gnocchi, that's what it should feel like.
• Roll the dough into a 3-inches wide log, then cut 1-inch wide discs and arrange them on a floured surface.
• Place a disc in the palm of your hand and place a little ham and mozzarella, or mushroom and mozzarella (about a tablespoon) in the center. Pinch the edges together to close the filling inside.
• Continue stuffing the bombe, arranging them an inch from each other.
• Cover the bombe with a floured kitchen towel, and let them rest for an hour or until they have doubled in size.
• Fry the bombe in at least 3 or 4 inches of oil and serve them warm.

*Pardon the stereotype. I base it only on my other relatives from Sicily, whose reason to exist seems to produce unlimited quantities of culinary triumphs.