Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Sicilian fried dough balls

It's a Christmas thing, apparently. They say so. It must be Christmas then in my mind. These two delightful birds, Hilah and Mel, entertained me tremendously. They're making dough balls with pizza tidbits inside them.



They are funny to me, they are not used to dough, but I am. I do this dough thing like one makes morning coffee. Bad analogy if you switch on a machine, but I'm comparing the real deal of coffee process, making dough is the same as that, just pour things into a bowl and stir with a dinner knife. Then you have a surly shaggy dough wad and rub it between your hands to make a snake. The weight of the dough stretches, the wad drops down but the stretch is tight and tends to break as you roll it. Even minor rolling is sufficient kneading because the weight is swinging around like a weighted pendulum but I usually do this vigorously. I play with the dough snake, fold it in half and let its weight stretch it as I sort of fire-stick rub the snake tail between my hands. The dough's elasticity develops right there in your hands, you can feel the dough change from unruly uncooperative tense and sticky to lined up and cooperative you feel it become elastic and smooth in your hands. That's the way to go. With dough. 

Or it can be done in 3 seconds in the Cuisinart with the blade. 

But then you don't get to play with it and you have to drag out he Cuisinart, clean it, put it away. And that's a bummer. 

So, they're very amusing because of their dough-uncertainty. But this idea of putting pizza bits inside is excellent. I tried a similar idea with pâte à choux but it wasn't so great and I thought next time think: the same amount of meaty tidbit to cheese as you would have with a tiny pizza. My mistake was stuffing the baked gougères with too much shredded chicken. Both those and these take a distressingly small amount of meat filling. 

It hardly seems worth it. 

But they are worth it. When I made these they were unbelievably satisfying, a not so sweet doughnut with savory elements. They fry in one minute and best right then, less good after they cool. 

I love honey-baked ham.

The one I bought was not the best. It's what was available at the store at the moment. I could doll it up a little. 


When you get down to here the spiral cuts no longer work. The blade skips over the bone so the meat must be chipped away from the bone.


This is ham diced finely with two types of cheese, Robusto and feta. Both of them are fantastic. This is showing the size, very small. The bag is leftover from this project and mixed together for something else, not before this project where the cheese is still separate. I'm still working on this ham. There are still a few tiny bits left.






I am one person living here. I have no business buying a large spiral cut ham, better to buy slices at the deli, but I don't care. The thing is going to sit in there for a long time and I don't care about that either. And I must have at it like a rodent until it is gone or else it is wasted. Of all the things that I made out of this ham, and there were a lot and they were all good, and when I got down to the bone, the marrow drawn from that for Swiss chard and beans was just spectacular, you never see that, even that was not so good as these. These are the best things that came from the ham after the spiral cuts became useless. Thank you, Ladies, you are fantastic and adorable and this idea is easy and fun. 

15 comments:

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

That looks amazing!

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Another Sicilian treat is fried rice balls.

Chip Ahoy said...

arancini

deep fried rice balls for some reason in the shape of pears. Elegance, I suppose.

Wait. It looks like they're baked.

Oh. I forgot about this: These were deep fried longer than they should have been then baked to even out the temperature. Whatevs. I don't think I did a very competent job of it. I mention wishing I had watched a certain video first that I discovered later.

chickelit said...

Did the Sicilians invent these or copy them from other seafaring countries?

I know of two other seafaring cultures (Dutch and Portuguese) who make fried dough balls.

chickelit said...

What did older cultures use as oil? Olive oil? Beef tallow?

Chip Ahoy said...

Yeah. The dumpling thing is universal. These are Sicilian because Mel is Sicilian and that's whence she learned it.

And I'll go along with that because I want to be on their team.

Come on, I'll fit right in. I can be silly too.

I've had boiled then shallow-fried pierogis and fried ravioli and fried pot stickers. Hush puppies. Shirley something Mexican, fried chimichanga what have you.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The NBA Commissioner freaks me out.

Chip Ahoy said...

I made a $214.00 oversight today. Oops.

*squeaky high ventriloquist voice* What happened, Chip?

*looks over shoulder* Well, it rained. Joe is in from Phoenix and we had lunch and with a few hours to kill he goes, "What did you intend to do?" I said, "Go to Home Depot and for dirt. And not just regular dirt. This project I learned many things what not to do. One of them is don't use organic potting mix. And I need a lot."

Joe is pushy. And also overly obsequious toward me. Joe is the guy who lost two of his friends within days, one who lived at his house, and he thinks I'm going to break. So although he is thirty years my senior, the oldest fellow I know, he grabs my backpack and tells me where to put it, organizes things vocalizing all this, "you get out here and I'll park the rental" that sort of thing all over the place with every instance of body transfer in and out of a vehicle, through doors. At Home Depot he'd grab the dirt bags before I can situate myself, he loads the cart, he empties the cart, now it's pouring, my two canes are hanging on the trolly handle, had I been by myself my movements would be directed only by myself, there would be no coordination with anybody, no listening to anybody, nobody else's concerns intruding, "Get in then van." So I did.

They're gone.

I ordered two more first thing, I was thinking about it anyway.

And my new ones nobody gets to play with them and twirl as batons. No denting the wood and scratching them up until I do first. Know what I mean? No pretending to be a majorette twirling one of my canes high above your head and stomping around in boots and with imaginary epaulettes on your shoulders and an enviously tall hat with an ostrich feather in it, and the thing goes spinning out your hand and BLAM right into the corner of a brick parapet wall. "Sorry, Chip." Man, I HATE it when that happens.

chickelit said...

As it happened, the Portuguese brought pork and dough balls to the Hawaiian islands (along with the ukelele).

Michael Haz said...

Nice work, Chip. This post has precisely the correct number of words. Don't change a thing.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Funny coincidence. It was just this morning that I said to myself: "You know what, dick sack? You should learn to stop worrying and love the rhyme. Nobody will judge you harshly for it."

So I said to myself: "You know what? You're right."

If it's breaded and fried, then it must be denied.

A personal rule for gustatory decision.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I love fried foods.

They don't love me.

*wipes away tiny little teardrop*

Michael Haz said...

Eric: One of my dreams is to open a restaurant that serves only deep fried foods. Fish, chips, tater tots, chicken, corndogs, oreos, Snickers bars, ice cream, calzones, empenadas, etc.

The working name of the place would be Fry Me To The Moon.

ndspinelli said...

My family made fried anchovy dough balls. Make you slap yo' mamma. They were part of our traditional Christmas Eve Italian 7 fish feast.

Synova said...

Spiral cut hams are awful. I buy a really yummy deboned and flattened ham (they cut the bone out and lay out the ham for smoking) from Costco. It's way too much for our family, too, even with several of us, but it's only about 4 inches thick anywhere so I cut it in quarters and freeze the rest.

Also... gotta go clean the deep fryer. I bought a new tub of lard for it.