Martedi Grasso

Happy Fat Tuesday!
Italy is a Catholic country, yet I am always surprised in the ways that this comes out. Not many people attend church, and they got rid of the crucifix in the classroom a while ago. However, there is often a sense of the church being married to the state; there is no gay marriage here, and the recent death of a comatose woman faced opposition from both the Pope and Berlusconi.

Carnevale, however, is an example of how not-so-Catholic Italians can be. It's not a church-sanctioned celebration or holiday. It's merely a getting-out-all-of-your-sins-before-Lent holiday. And Italy certainly embraces it.

Today Siena had its Fat Tuesday party in the square. All of the little kids were dressed up, chasing each other around with silly string and bags of confetti (called coriandoli here; confetti is a type of candy). There were several clowns and bands, and not much else going on, but it seemed to be the highlight of the year for the little kids. The makeshift hut on the corner that's been selling frittelli for weeks was still cranking out the fried rice balls.

On that note, here is the traditional Italian Carnevale meal. The primo piatto is gnocci. The secondo piatto is pork because of the traditional meat fast of Lent. The dolci is always something fried and powdered in sugar, fried in pig fat. Here is an easy recipe for "cenci" (this is the Tuscan word for the dolci, meaning 'rags'):

(Apologies that this is all in grams...we tried to make chocolate chip cookies from an American recipe last week and the conversion from volume [cup]to weight [g] was painful)

400g flour (grami di farina)
2 eggs (uova)
50g sugar (zucchero)
50g liquid butter, not hot (di burro sciolto e tiepido)
Lemon zest (las scorsa di un limone grattugiata
About three spoonfuls of dessert wine (cerca 3 cucchiai di vin santo)
Powdered sugar
Lard or hot oil

First, put the flour in a large bowl. Make a hole in the middle for the eggs, then the sugar, then the butter. Everything should go in there, and mix with each other. Then, mix with the flour and work it into a dough.
Roll out the dough and slice into rectangular, triangular, twists, whatever shape you like. Fry in the oil, and dust with the sugar when cool. Enjoy!