Cicerchiata

Carnival has always been a special time of the year for us, in Le Marche. Also, many years ago even the poorest dedicated themselves to the cooking and the tradition has never changed so far. Our region boasts a cooking tradition that has nothing to envy to other regions.

The Carnival menu has many entries, today we’ll focus on the Cicerchiata.

Bare in mind: there’s no Carnival dish without a frying moment!

Cicerchiata has a funny name for Italians (it is a common dish here, yet unknown in other regions): it comes from cicerchia, a bean harvested only in a small area in Le Marche, around Serra de’ Conti. Indeed, cicerchiata is made of bean shaped pastry.

Here’s the recipe of Mamma Graziella, and her showing us on YouTube how to do it!

As for other recipes, there is a typical, yet hard to find, ingredient: if you can’t find it in your shops, you can replace it with rum

Ingredients

• Flour (about 100gr but you can adjust it if you see the dough isn’t firm enough)
• 100 gr butter
• 3 eggs
• A tbsp baking powder
• Yeast
• A Pinch of salt
• Vanilla
• Frying oil
• 200 gr Honey
• 150 gr Sugar
• One tbsp Cocoa powder (for the black version)
• The TYPICAL one: 25 cl mistrà

Aromatic liquor distilled from wine too weak to drink, mixed with aniseed, fruit and herbs, with medicinal properties

Preparation

Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the butter and the eggs. Stir in the baking powder, the yeast, vanilla, salt, mistrà and mix to a firm dough. Knead the dough briefly and gently on a floured surface.

Roll the pastry and cut off long thin stripe and make little bean-shaped parts.

Fry the little ones in a large pan (usually 250ml of frying oil is required) and let them dry.

Now  add the sugar in another dry large pan and as soon as it starts to melt, add also the honey and the little bean-shaped pastries. Let them stick together and transfer them on a flat surface (preferable on a wooden one).

Glutton’s tips: add  the cocoa powder together with honey&sugar.

Cicerchiata must be served cold.

Watch also our video to learn it properly!