sfingi

sfingi, or fried dough balls

The Italian holiday of St. Joseph's Day is celebrated every March 19th.  Everyone wears red and some people go to a St. Joseph's Day "table" (I'm still figuring this one out, but it's basically a communal eating event with friends and family).  My mother-in-law prepares special dishes to celebrate, including pasta con sarde (pasta with sardines) and sfingi (fried dough).  She buys a particular Italian brand of canned sauce for the pasta, which includes tomatoes, fennel, capers, and possibly olives too.  She mixes in sardines and sprinkles bread crumbs on top (bread crumbs that have been "toasted" in olive oil ... toasted, fried, whatever).  It is one of my favorite pasta dishes she makes.  I tasted sfingi for the first time this year.  To make sfingi, you combine "baking mix" (my mother-in-law used Jiffy brand but I imagine Bisquick would work too), eggs, ricotta cheese, and sugar to form a batter.  [Possibly other ingredients too -- I didn't see the actual process because my mother-in-law slipped off to the basement to whip these up and reappeared a short while later with the platter pictured above!  All of the information I'm providing here is just what I gleaned from my conversation with her in between stuffing my face with sfingi.]  The batter is then deep fried to a golden brown (my mother-in-law used a combination of vegetable oil and extra-virgin olive oil).  The fried dough is then placed on paper towels to absorb the excess oil and sprinkled with powdered sugar as a finishing touch.  These are crispy on the outside and doughy/creamy on the inside.  Addictive.  Sfingi are a Sicilian specialty but other parts of Italy eat similar items for St. Joseph's Day (such as zeppole).