Everyone who knows me knows that I'm absolutely in love with Italy and the Italian cuisine in particular.
The perfect trip for me is to tour around Italy, eat delicious food and drink Chianti all day everyday.
The Italian cuisine is MAGIC, the kind of magic that words can't explain. I can only say that every time I think about the meals I had in Italy a big smile is smeared all over my face and I am filled with an absolute joy.
Today we start celebrating Hanukkah, AKA - the holiday of doughnuts!!!
So I thought it would be cool to try making Zeppole.
Zeppole is an Italian doughnuts, identified with the province of Calabria in southern Italy.
My Italian friends told me they make these doughnuts when they are celebrating something.
There are two versions, one sweet and one savoury.
I chose to make the savoury version, a fried doughnut stuffed with goodies :)
I made it stuffed with anchovies and basil, which is the popular version to my understanding.
And also with cherry tomatoes, basil and mozzarella.
The dough itself also has different recipes, I guess every family has its own recipe.
some make the dough with potatoes and there are also recipes with flour only, after a little research, I've tested a several recipes and I ended up with the recipe that suited my palate.
so this is the recipe-
Ingredients:
For the dough-
1K of all-purpose flour
10g of dry yeast
A tablespoon of salt
3 glasses of lukewarm water (700 ml)
3 teaspoons olive oil
For the filling-
anchovy
Basil leaves
Cherry tomatoes
Mozzarella cheese
Preparation:
Mix the water in a bowl with 20% of the flour until you get a smooth batter, mix it using your hands. No need to use a mixer.
Add the yeast and dissolve it into the batter.
At this let the batter rest for about 10 minutes.
Add a little bit more flour to the batter and mix it.
Add the salt and olive oil.
And again, add some more flour and mix with your hands.
Repeat several times until you use the entire amount of flour.
The dough should be a little sticky but not too sticky.
If the dough is not sticky at all add another drop of water and if it is too sticky add a little bit more flour.
Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest and rise for about an hour or two until it doubled its size.
Spread some oil on the palms of your hands to make it easier to work with the dough.
Take a small piece of dough, open it on the palm of your hand and place in it the anchovy and a leaf of basil (or cherry tomato, mozzarella, basil and some salt), close the dough and make sure that there are no holes. so when you'll fry it the oil won't penetrate inside.
Fry in boiling oil until golden on both sides.
Remove and place on absorbent paper to soak up the oil.
I will Recommend trying the Zeppole with some chili or cherry jam (Recipes can be found here.) , it's delicious!
Enjoy! :)
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