12 Feb Carnival, A Caterpillar & Ricotta Frittelle
It is Carnival today. Fat Thursday, you see. In my ignorance I thought there was just a Fat Tuesday, but in Italy there’s a fat Thursday too. This means costumes, coloured streamers, great black plastic speakers pumping dance music in the streets (you didn’t know children love deafening house tunes?) and fried, glazed, baked and sugared beige goods of all kinds.
So, I have spent the morning stapling stubby green legs to a fat caterpillar body, for the Saint to dress as his current favourite character, the Hungry Caterpillar. I pointblank refuse to buy fancy-dress costumes. When we were children, we had a dressing up trunk. It was a real chest, with a buckle and curved lid like a pirate’s treasure chest, and inside it lived a motley assortment of things my mother accumulated. Some real costumes she had rescued from a theatre that was closing down (including two, large, hairy Big Foot feet which had gone crisp with age). There were things she had sewn or made for us, including my Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz outfit made entirely out of silver milk carton cardboard. There were feather bowers and raunchy nighties and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles outfits. The trunk lived under a portrait of a severe looking ancestor, always known as Great Uncle Willy, who we were petrified of as children. This meant we played dress up a little less that we may have liked, also because both Willy and the trunk were in the far end of our old farmhouse, where no one ever went and the heating was never switched on, so it was icily cold. My mother also kept all her milk teeth in a little jar in a tall cupboard in this end room, as well as loose locks of our childhood hair (including an entire plait I had had cut off at around 10. My mother wept as the hairdresser cut it off in one swift movement). What with the bitter cold, the creepy hair, teeth, crispy feet and Uncle Willy, this wasn’t a part of the house we went into willingly, unless we dared each other, in which case one of us would usually begin dressing up and then abandon the other mid-change, slamming the door on them and yelling gleefully that Uncle Willy would get them, whilst they hopped around with one leg stuck into a Big Foot costume.
Here in Sardinia, we do not have a dressing up trunk. Or Bad Uncle Willy. But we do have a basket of material scraps and a woman who is willing. And that, my friends, is often enough.
We may live in a world where we can order something last minute from Amazon but this, to me, is not at all not what the spirit of dress up is about. My approach to costumes is much the same as my approach to cooking. Things are ALWAYS better when homemade. They may be imperfect, shaggy, a little skew-whiff. There may be threads here and the odd spike of a staple sticking out there. But they are always going to be better than some horrible polyester onesie that comes in a polythene bag and smells of plastic and exploitation. So, a few feet of coloured felt later, here I am, stapling seven (I ran out of steam) little legs onto a bulging, green, caterpillar body. I also ran out of steam with the sewing. Hence the stapling. You have no idea how useful a stapler is in such circumstances. I am seriously considering a glue gun, as I look into the murky, frying-fug future of every Carnival to come.
The other argument for DIY costumes, like DIY cooking, is that you can make it however the hell you want. They are unique, and will create a memory that lasts forever, because the process of creating them (whether it was cathartic or excruciating) took time and thought, and was something you were actively involved in. Pressing the BUY button on your phone is not something you’re ever going to reminisce about. Like home-made gifts, and home-made food, and anything home-made, in fact, the making benefits everyone involved, because you are actively creating an experience. I read something about happiness the other day. It said that experts (happiness experts, you know) have proven that happiness comes from experiences, not from objects. Making this costume, and my son wearing it, I have created two experiences, which will lead to many more, and to memories, too. Yes, I may have sworn and squinted at my sewing machine for half an hour every night this week before going to bed, but that is a memory too, and one I will happily regale my son with when he is bigger and we look at photos of him in his hopelessly home-made, seven-legged Hungry Caterpillar costume, complete with a real orange (on Friday, he ate FIVE ORANGES!).
Now the costume is covered, so to the catering.
There are too many Carnival sweets to choose from, and I have written about many of them before. There are doughnuts and cream puffs and fried pasta strips dusted with icing sugar and a special, snake coiled and sugar dusted doughnut unique to Sardinia called a Zippola (what a word!). There are cakes and pizzette and candy and chocolate but most of all, what really signifies Carnival, is frying (I have written about this, too, in lots of my books). This recipe, which is the lowest maintenance but most delicious fried thing I know, will definitely be made. It’s from Wild Figs, but I think tomorrow I’ll make them without the saffron and orange, and with dark chocolate chips instead. I’ll let you know how they turn out. The same with the costume. If I can wrestle him into it.
Happy Fat Thursday to all!
The batter is essentially cake-mix consistency, and two spoons scoop it neatly into hot frying oil, in they plop, up they bob, out they come; golden and glistening. Fried cakes, small and sweet and perfumed, and wonderfully light, they stay moist for days if you keep them in an airtight container.
Makes around 10-12.
250g ricotta
2 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
Good pinch of salt
Grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges
100g plain flour
50g potato flour (optional but helps make them extra light – can use 150g all plain flour if preferred)
A good pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1tbsp warm water, or a pinch of ground saffron
½ tsp of vanilla extract (optional and if not using lievito)
2 tsp baking powder or half a bustina of Italian lievito (usually flavoured with vanilla)
1 litre of frying oil (I use groundnut, peanut or sunflower)
Sugar, either granulated or icing, or honey if you prefer.
Whisk the eggs and ricotta until smooth. Add the sugar, salt, citrus zest, vanilla extract and the flours, baking powder/lievito and saffron and whisk until you have a smooth batter.
Heat the oil in a deep pan until it swirls (it must be around 190 but not so hot that it’s smoking, otherwise it will burn the frittelle). Test it with a piece of bread if you like: the bread should bob and fry nicely, becoming brown after 30 seconds or so.
Now, using two teaspoons, scoop little blobs of the mixture into the hot oil (they should be the size of walnuts, and will swell slightly whilst cooking). Turn them over as they cook to make sure they are evenly brown on all sides.
Scoop them out onto some absorbent paper and then roll them in the sugar of your choice whilst still hot.
They are also very good drizzled with honey if you’d prefer.
