Katy’s Carnival Bugie
Carnival is important in Italy and is held in February. The most famous is probably the one held in
Venice, although every village, town and city in Italy also celebrates its own saint and has a meal
or festa to honour them. In our village the patron saint is San Lorenzo (St Lawrence) and he is
celebrated with nine nights delle stelle cadenti, of the shooting stars, with a speciality dish every
single night, dancing, fireworks, fairground rides and drinking lots of local wine.
Bugie are eaten in Piedmont on Shrove Tuesday. They are very simple, but moreish, and
should be served with Asti Spumante or Prosecco.
Ingredients:
180 g butter
300 g sugar
6 eggs
1 glass milk or wine
1 kg plain flour, sifted
2 sachets of Pane degli Angeli or Bertolini vanilla
yeast, available from Italian delis
zest of 1 lemon
oil for frying
icing sugar, sifted
salt
Mix the butter and sugar together and then add the eggs. When you have a nice mixture
mix in the milk or wine. Add the flour, yeast, some salt, and then the lemon zest to form a soft
dough.
Roll out to 2 cm thickness, cut into strips with a pasta/pastry cutter and shallow fry until
golden but not dark brown in colour. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain on kitchen paper, and
sprinkle with sifted icing sugar before serving warm.
*taken from the book ‘From Seed to plate’ by Paolo Arrigo, published by Simon and Schuster