San Giuseppe Festival and the “Frittelle”

In Montefioralle each year they have a 2 day Festival celebrating San Giuseppe (St Joseph as we knew him).  They set up several mobile serving caravans in the Square, and cook these crazy delicacies called Frittelle, made from rice, oil, sugar, orange rind and I’m not sure what else, deep fried & served hot doused with icing sugar – here’s the process …

They used to drop the mixture in by hand, but there were too many burnt hands, so now they drop it in from this machine.  They’re about the size of a heaped teaspoon.

The vat holds 200L of boiling oil & it’s changed every day.  Half a dozen men swirl the Frittelle round the vat until they’re done (about 2 minutes) then drain them. It seems a serious affair

This is the local restaurant owner, and this is how you take Frittelle home – a bit like fish’n’chips

Then you eat them, they are divine.  In our case, washed down with Vinsanto, a fortified wine similar to sherry, courtesy of the Franconi family.  Then you have dreadful indigestion all night, oh Mama yessirreee

The parents of our villa’s owner, Carla and Forese Franconi, invited us in to their home in Montefioralle; it’s hundreds of years old.  Carla made some Frittelle for us specially and she is a fabulous cook.  We felt honoured and were intrigued to see one of these buildings from the inside and observe how they carry out their daily life.  Truly fascinating.  We have walked round and round lots of hilltop towns with tiny cobbled streets and often wondered what the houses are like inside, so how lucky were we?  We managed 3 hours of animated gestural lively conversation even though 1 of us doesn’t speak Italian and 2 of them don’t speak English.  Linz’s Italian has had a rapid dust off and he is coping superbly as both communicator and translator, and his assistant, the Vinsanto, helped to jolly the evening along.