Carnival time, time for pancakes and... crostoli? lies? galani? milkshake? What do you call that mixture of flour, sugar, eggs, brandy or grappa and salt which you roll out into a thin sheet, cut into scalloped strips, fry in plenty of oil, butter or lard and serve sprinkled with sugar?
You should know that dictionaries attest to these terms, in non-literary sources, as early as the 15th century.
The dictionary of the Italian language Zingarelli reports for cencio, or for the plural form cenci: "egg pasta dessert, cut into circles, rectangles or strips and fried or baked, typical of the carnival".
The Grande Dizionario Italiano dell'Uso di Tullio de Mauro (GRADIT) reports a similar definition which confirms its Tuscan nature.
Both dictionaries refer to other regional synonyms:
- LIES (Piedmontese, Ligurian)
- CHIACCHERE (Lombard)
- CROSTOLO or GROSTOLO (Veneto)
- GALANO (Venetian)
- FRAPPA (Emilian, central Italy)
- WONDERS (Sardinia)
- CRESPELLE AND SPRELLE (central Italy)
and... we definitely won't have listed them all!!
Call them what you want but choose the right ones.
Many industrial lies make you believe that they are baked when they are more fried than you and me.
Is it a scam? No, they simply have a machine which, since it heats the product, can be called an oven and therefore they tell you that they have switched to the oven.
Forget that they are lighter than others and therefore you feel less guilty if you eat one more.
But the worst thing are the bakeries, many of these make you believe that they make them but in reality they buy them from companies. And I'm not just talking about the flat breads, many also buy the curled and filled ones.
Why?
Simple, to earn more!
Now you will ask yourself: "So where should I buy them?"
In the pastry shop or bakery but check, if you can, that they actually make them because otherwise you are buying the same product in the supermarket at double the price.
How do you know if they really make them?
From the shape, if they were made by hand they must visually be like the homemade ones, irregular and perhaps not with the same colour.
The industrial ones are all the same, color and shape, but above all perfect.
Or go to the supermarket but be careful not to spend too little.
Madreterra , as for the other products, has selected a small craftsman who fries them with an industrial machine but I can guarantee you that the quality is artisanal; he uses the machine only because frying by hand for 12 hours a day had become exhausting.
Now the choice is yours...
you can go to the supermarket, the baker, the pastry chef or come to MADRETERRA.
I'll wait for you in the shop!