Opravy

Struffoli are a delicacy.

Let’s start from the very beginning.

Prepare a fine dough, then cut it into little balls and cover them with flour.

After this, they need to be fried!

Are you tired yet?

This is the most important part.

Now, add up: a great deal of honey and some sweetened pumpkin (a cocozza ‘nzuccherata).

You are not done yet, hold on.

You have to cover the fried balls with nonpareils, which are shapely, tiny, colourful.

They are called little devils (diavulille) but I think you'll feel as if you are in heaven while eating them.

They contain loads of calories.

They are far too heavy.

They are not healthy, aren't they?

Well, it doesn’t matter.

It’s Christmas.

This is a poem taken from the struffoli official website (www.struffoli.it) which describes in a few words the exceptional art of making this typical Christmas sweet.

They are composed of a heap of little fried balls garnished with diavulille (nonpareils) as well as a great amount of honey.

It’s considered to be the Neapolitan Christmas sweet par excellence.

It’s well known all around the country and exported worldwide.

In spite of what we can imagine, it wasn’t a Neapolitan that came up with this wonderful idea, although we all know the great creativity of this population.

The recipe is very old, and may date back to the foundation of Partenope by the Greeks, those who brought the struffoli here.

The name may derive from the word ‘strongolous’, meaning ‘rounded’, and the term ‘pristòs’ meaning ‘cut’.

Therefore, a stongoulos pristos, namely a little round cut ball, would become a ‘strangolapre(ve)te, that’s is to say the little dumpling made by women for churchmen as partial payment for land rents.

Their husbands would be angered by the venal priest, and would wish for them to choke.

Others think that the word struffoli may derive from ‘strofinare’ (to rub), namely the movement you make to mould the dough so as to give it the cylinder-shaped form.

From Naples, it spread all around the central southern part of Italy, and its name was changed sometimes: in Rome and Palermo, it’s called ‘strufoli’ with just one f.

In Umbria and Abruzzo, it’s called cicerchiata, because they are chickling pea-shaped, that is the legumes containing poison seeds.

In Viterbo it’s called ‘castagnole’, namely the pancakes that people eat during Carnival time.