Fritole alla veneziana (Venetian Carnival Fritters)

Frank2 March 2019dessert/dolci, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, snack, Venice and the Veneto39 Comments

In Italy, Carnival, that last blast of excess before the austerity of the Lenten season, is known for fried foods of all sorts, especially sweet ones.

I grew up on Angelina’s chiacchiere, the fried dough ribbons typical of southern Italy and beyond, but in Venice and nearby Trieste, they make fritole, sometimes spelled frittole—lovely roundish fritters made with a soft, batter-like dough perfumed with liqueur and dotted with softened raisins and served with a generous dusting of powdered sugar. They may not replace chiacchiere in my affections, but they’re very good indeed.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

For the dough:

400g (14 oz) AP flour
3 tsp dry active yeast
25g (4 or 5 heaping Tbs) sugar
A small pinch of salt
2 eggs
50 ml (1/4 cup) of rum (or other liqueur—see Notes)
250 ml (1 cup) milk, or q.b.
100g (3-1/2 oz) raisins

For frying and serving:

Vegetable oil
Confectioner’s sugar

Directions

Cover the raisins with warm water and a drizzle of rum if you like, and leave them to soak until they’ve softened, about 10-15 minutes, and drain.

Meanwhile, mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Then mix in the eggs, rum and enough milk to form a very sticky, wet dough, with a texture almost as loose as a dense batter. (A standing mixer makes short work of this.) Fold in the raisins so they are equally distributed throughout the dough.

Cover the bowl and set in a warm place for the dough to rise. Let it rest until the dough has doubled in volume and full of tiny bubbles.

Heat oil at least 5cm/2 inches deep in a deep fryer or large Dutch oven to 180C/350F. Drop in the dough by small spoonfuls, using one spoon to scoop up the sticky dough and another to slip it off the first spoon and into the hot oil. Deep fry until the dough balls are puffed up and golden brown.

Serve your fritole still warm, covered with confectioner’s sugar.

Notes on Fritole

Yeast can be unpredictable. The time it will take for the dough to rise will depend on the yeast itself as well as the ambient temperature. In a cold winter kitchen, may take longer than the two hours called for here. It did for me. I had to wait a good three plus hours for the dough to double in bulk. It may help speed things up to proof the yeast by mixing it into warm (not hot) water and allowing it to sit for a few minutes, until it begins to foam. This “jump starts” the activation of the yeast. And if your oven has a bread proofing function, set very low at around 30C/85F, the temperature of a summer’s day, that would a great place to let your dough rise.

And while fritole are at their best while they’re still warm, they’re not half bad at room temperature, either. If you like, you can reheat them in the oven as well. If your oven has an air fry function, all the better.

Variations

The sweetness of rum works very well for making frittole, but recipes—I suspect the original version—call for grappa, while others call for anisette.

Besides this very basic version of fritole, more elaborate versions exist. Some call for a richer dough with more eggs and/or butter, in which case you’ll probably need less milk. Some make the dough much sweeter with more sugar. And in addition to raisins called for here, some recipes flavor the dough with ingredients like lemon zest, pine nuts, candied fruit, and spices such as cinnamon. Bakeries offer fritole stuffed with crema pasticcera in the manner of bignè di san Giuseppe.

And to save time, some recipes (especially the ones in English) call for baking powder instead of yeast. I personally don’t recommend it, however, as I find baking powder tends to lend a rather unpleasant metallic taste to the dough. And anyway, the slow rise you need with yeast brings out the flavors of the dough in way that quick-acting baking powder doesn’t manage to do.

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