Tag: Carnival

Carnival chiacchiere: the perfect recipe – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

You are looking for the perfect recipe for Carnival chatter? You are in the right place. Because we have tried many, but we will never abandon this one again.

This dessert is widespread throughout Italy and is prepared in many variations, many more than there are names by which chiacchiere are called. Lies, galani, frappe, cenci, handkerchiefs, crostoli: each region has a very special way of calling them but the basis of the preparation remains more or less the same. I am small variables make the difference: the quantity of one or the other ingredient or, again, the liqueur chosen to put in the mixture. Ours have a special scent, which will not disappoint you. Shall we prepare them together?

The perfect recipe for Carnival chatter

The secret to obtain perfect, crunchy chiacchiere with lots of bubbles on the surface lies in the drafting of thedough that must be thin as a veil and in the cooking in oil boiling at the right temperature. Finally, have fun with the shape and finish to create chatter that is not only delicious to eat, but also beautiful to look at.

Ingredients for 8 people

300 g of 00 flour
70 g of white grappa (or dry white wine)
50 g of granulated sugar
25 g of melted butter
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 pinch of salt
1 L peanut oil
icing sugar to taste

Method

Sift the Flour on the pastry board and add the pinch of salt. Make a hole in the center and add it sugar semolina, theegg and the yolk and the butter melted. Start mixing with a fork then add the grappa. Knead with your hands for about ten minutes until you obtain a smooth, homogeneous and compact dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 2 hours.
After this time, take the dough and break off a piece, keeping the rest in the film to prevent it from drying out. Flour it, roll it out with your fingers, then throw it into the pasta machine. Start by adjusting the machine to the largest thickness, then fold the dough a couple of times and proceed to the immediately lower thickness, and so on, until you obtain sheets 1 mm thick.
Arrange the sheets obtained on a floured surface, trim the edges with a serrated pastry cutter, then cut them into many rectangles. Make a 3 cm cut widthwise in the center of each rectangle without ever reaching the edge. Continue like this until you run out of dough.
Pour thefry oil in a saucepan with high sides (preferably made of iron or aluminium). Bring it to a temperature of 160° and fry the chiacchiere a few at a time, turning them halfway through cooking until they are golden on both sides. Once ready, remove them with the slotted spoon and let them drain on a sheet of absorbent paper for fried foods. When they are no longer hot, sprinkle them generously powdered sugar and serve.

If you still want to chat, we recommend the recipe for stuffed chatter and that of salty talk.

Tips for making them special

Have you always eaten them only sprinkled with sugar and icing? Also try the variations we suggest.

Ricotta pancakes recipe, the recipe – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

TO Carnivalbut not only that, let’s prepare these delicious ones ricotta pancakesan alternative to classic recipe of this dessert. The preparation is simple and quick.

The mixture is prepared by boiling the milk with the butter and adding the Flour. When the mixture has cooled you can add the eggthe ricottait sugar and a little bit of rum. With ricotta the dough will be soft and velvety and, after frying in boiling oil, the pancakes will be very soft.

Ricotta pancakes are still served warmcovered with caster sugar. Also discover these recipes: Pancakes with raisins, Pancakes with raisins and aleatic wine, Apple pancakes, Bignole with cream.

Venice Carnival: 7 cheerful and delicious recipes – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Fried creams – I Rombi del Doge

The rumble, or lozenge, is a widely used heraldic figure and ended up giving its name to the fried cream cooked by the Venetians and cut into this geometric shape, so exquisite that it became a delicacy worthy of a prince, or indeed a doge, the most prominent figure of the Very serene. All the Venetian bàcari, the typical taverns, served these exquisite and fragrant “rombi del doge”, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, from the day of Saint Anthony until Shrove Tuesday, according to tradition, possibly accompanied by a nice glass of passito wine.

The fritola – An affair of state

Born in the fourteenth century and proclaimed in the eighteenth century «national dessert of the Serenissima, the fritole were prepared exclusively by members of the renowned fritoleri guild who handed down the recipe from father to son, and also sold on street corners, stuck while still boiling in a wooden skewer to avoid greasing your fingers and sweeten generously with a special container with holes in it. L’art of local fryers was so appreciated that Goldoniin his famous comedy The little squareplaces among the protagonists the fritolera Orsola, a figure that painters like Pietro Longhi have immortalized on their canvases, indispensable protagonists of the Carnival.

Masks – Black and White

Wearing the Bautathe most famous Venetian disguise, the face remained hidden under a white mask, the Larvawhich covered three quarters of the face and also altered the voice, making the wearer unrecognizable, so much so that the Inquisition objected to the indiscriminate use that many aristocrats made of it even outside the carnival period to combine cooked and raw . La Moretta, also called “mute servant”, was instead dark and oval in shape; reserved for women, to wear it one had to “bite” a button placed inside at mouth level, so that the wearer could not speak. They preferred it to be popular and bourgeois.

Neapolitan pasticcio – A seducer’s dish

Giacomo Casanova was a protagonist of the Venetian Carnival. A refined gourmet, in his memoirs he mentions among his favorite dishes the macaroni pie «prepared by a good Neapolitan chef, perfect for days of celebration and joy. At that time the tomato had not yet entered the kitchens as a common ingredient the pasta (“maccherone” was the common name for various shapes, short and long) was also seasoned with sugar and honey. Our recipe is taken from a Neapolitan repertoire from the second half of the eighteenth century, Il cuoco galante by Vincenzo Corrado.

The historical text was written by the expert Marina Migliavacca.