Chiacchiere
Thin ribbons of sweet dough fried until they blister and crisp, then dusted with icing sugar.
Photograph credit: Faworki (close-up) (image of Angel wings on Wikidata Q35056) by Marcin Floryan · CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Roll the dough very thin for a crisp ribbon.
Watch the pan, as thin dough browns in seconds.
Add the icing sugar at the last moment.
Making Chiacchiere
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Mix the flour, sugar, salt, eggs, butter and grappa and knead for 5 minutes into a smooth dough. Rest for 20 minutes.
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Roll the dough very thin in batches and cut into strips 3 cm wide and 12 cm long. Make a slit in the middle of each.
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Heat the oil to 170°C / 340°F. Fry 4 or 5 strips at a time for 1 minute on each side until pale gold and blistered.
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Drain on kitchen paper and cool completely.
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Dust with the icing sugar just before serving.
Why It Works
It looks like a ribbon of pastry and shatters like glass, which is the whole appeal. Chiacchiere, whose name means chatter, are the thin fried ribbons of dough sold across Italy at carnival time, and what makes them good is how thin they are rolled.
The dough is flour, sugar, eggs, butter and a splash of grappa or white wine, which helps it blister in the oil. Knead it for 5 minutes until smooth, then rest it for 20 minutes so it rolls easily. Roll it until you can see the work surface through it, a little over 1 mm, using a pasta machine if you have one. Thick dough comes out hard and bready.
Cut it into strips, make a slit in the middle of each and fry in oil at 170°C / 340°F for about 1 minute a side. They colour fast, so do not leave the pan. Drain on kitchen paper, cool, and dust heavily with icing sugar just before you serve them.
Storage and Reheating
Keeps for 3 days in a tin, undusted.
Swaps and Variations
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
Good With
- Coffee
- Hot chocolate
- Sweet wine
Common Questions About Chiacchiere
How long does Chiacchiere take to make?
40 minutes of preparation and 10 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of resting, so allow 1 hour 10 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 8.
Chiacchiere Nutrition Facts
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (how much frying oil the food takes up cannot be known from the recipe). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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