VENICE CARNIVAL: CARNIVAL CAKES

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VENETIAN MASKS- CARNIVAL 2008 - THE FEAST OF MARIE - MURANO GLASSWARE

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CARNIVAL CAKES

The Carnival time precedes that of the Lent so it is expected the greatest amusement for everybody, followed by a fasting and penance period. For such reason the typical cakes of the VenetianCarnival are very fatty, fried in oil and particularly tasty.

FRITTERS

If you are in Venice during the Carnival time, you cannot get out of tasting what for ages has been considered the national cake of the Serenissima Republic, namely the fritter or ‘Venetian fritola’ which people used to, and still nowadays use to savour not only in Venice, but in the whole territory of the Veneto and Friuli, nearly as far as Milano. The fritter was produced only by the ‘fritter makers’, who, in order to emphasize their official nature, in 1600 founded an association which was made of seventy of them, each one with one’s own area where they could carry on, with an exclusive right, their own trade, with the assurance that just their children would succeed to them. Such corporation went on working till the fall of the lagoon Republic, though the craft of the ‘fritter makers’ definitively disappeared from the Venetian calli only at the end of 1800. The historians affirm that the fritter makers used to knead fritters, made of eggs, flour, sugar, raisins and pine-seeds, on large wooden tables. Then they used to fry them in oil, pork fat or butter, in enormous pans supported by tripods. Once they were ready, they were covered with sugar and placed on large decorated plates, and close to them, on other plates the ingredients that had been used were shown off in order to emphasize the genuineness of such products. Even if the original fritter is, in any case, the Venetian one, in the whole Veneto, some local recipes spread, consisting in fritters prepared with fruits plunged into a batter, or having flowers or vegetables, in some cases even with spontaneous herbs growing on the meadows or the mountains, or with rice and polenta. Nonetheless the influence of the ‘fritoa’ infected other cultures too, so that we can find even the Jewish fritters which the Jews prepare still nowadays.

GALANI

Other typical cakes of the Carnival, but having very ancient origins, are the galani, which are also called ‘chiacchiere’ or ‘chats’, ‘crostoli’ or ‘lattughe’. They are even thought as having Roman ancient origins: the Romans, during the spring feast, used to prepare, with the same dough with which lasagna are made, some cakes that were very similar to the galani fried in the pork fat and then covered with sugar. In Venice, in the confectioner’s and baker’s shops you can find, from January to the end of the Carnival, both fritters and galani or crostoli. Anyway you have to know that there is a slight difference, not just in the dough, but in the thickness of the pastry and its form, between the crostoli, that are typical of the Venetian dry land, and the galani, which are a typical lagoon cake. As a matter of fact the galani are thin and very crumbly, and their form reminds us that of ribbons. The crostoli, instead, have got a regular rectangular form and they are thick, having a slightly less crumbly and thicker pastry.

for more about CARNIVAL SENSATION 2009 click here

VENETIAN MASKS- CARNIVAL 2008 - THE FEAST OF MARIE