I've made a few references to this local New England (Polish-American, but I don't know its Polska name) county fair and drive-in movie delicacy. When you've finished deep-frying the dough, then you coat it thoroughly with powdered sugar. Repeat 30 times a year until you weigh 350 pounds and need to have your heart catheterized.This is the kind of food you put in traps if you're trying to catch Bill Clinton. (He taught everything he knew about eating to Al Gore.) I really can't believe it's still legal to sell it.
Oh, right, don't forget to brush it with melted butter before you sprinkle the sugar on it.
from Maine Public Radio
Fried Dough
To prepare the dough:
½ cup milk
¾ cup water
1 tablespoon Canola oil
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons yeast
Add to the bowl of a bread maker and set on the dough cycle. Or, mix vigorously in a large mixing bowl and let rise until double in bulk.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Punch down and knead. Roll out to about 1/8 inch thick. Cut into strips 2 ½ inches wide and cut the strips into squares. Cover and let rest for about 10 minutes.
Using a large fry pan, fill with about three inches of cooking oil. Heat until the temperature of the oil is 360 degrees. If the fat is too cool, the dough will absorb the oil and if the fat is too hot, the dough will brown before it is cooked in the middle.
Lower the dough gently into the cooking oil, two or three pieces at a time. When brown on one side, turn and brown on the other side. Lift from the cooking oil with a fork or tongs and drain on paper towels.
Brush the fried dough with melted butter and sprinkle with powdered or cinnamon sugar.
12 comments:
It's German food! "Grebbel"
More Heartstoppers!
Danke!
Where I live (Western Massachusetts) the main ethnicity is Polish, and they're the ones whose grandmas (babushkas?) keep making this stuff and shoving it lovingly down the maws of their families. A county fair hereabouts without Fried Dough -- well, it just wouldn't be the county fair.
You got a screwy ethnicity where you live -- the world's only colonly of Icelanders big enough to have a newspaper in Icelandic! How's the Winnipeg Icelander community doing? Thriving? Shrinking? They still publish that newspaper?
Though it fills me with dread and terror, I can't wait to click on your Heartstoppers menu!
Oh man, Schlachteplatte! Will you LOOK at that thing??? I am simultaneously weeping with delicious joy, and shivering with terror at the medical consequences of Schlachteplatte. Ever since I started travelling in Europe, I have developed a serious addiction to Wurst -- in fact I speak a dialect called Eisenbahnundwurstdeutsches.
If I click on that site, will I get a Schlacteplatte FedExed to me by Friday?
I can't stop gazing at the Schlacteplatte!!! I've never seen anything so mesmerizing and hypnotic!
Canada abolished capital punishment, but we still got it here in the States. I think you just linked me to my Last Meal. (And when I finish eating it, they won't have to go to the bother of executing me.)
It is a well known fact that Ambrosia, the so-called food of the Gods in ancient Greece, was actually a primitive form of fried dough. I don't think Zeus died of a coronary, but if he did, he was smiling when he did it.
My old landlady on Graves Avenue (other side of the railroad tracks in Northampton) was a Mrs. Strecziwilc. She tried to feed me to death.
I would regularly come home to the smell of sauerkraut being made (there were 25 gallon vats of the stuff in the basement...we never had mice or ants...the fumes would have killed them), or even better, pierogies. Hers were the size of tea saucers and filled with lots of different things, some of which I could even identify.
Then, there was the fried dough. On nice days, she would make it in a pot of boiling oil out in the back yard on a gas ring. She would make doughnuts too, its essentially the same batter.
I paved her basement for her. I had to, to work of the extra fat. Mr. S. died of a stroke the first year I lived there, and I can't help to find the irony in that Mrs. S. and her sisters spent an entire week cooking all this fried, fatty, salted food for the wake.
i don't know which is sadder, remembering about all the Wonderful Food of my past, or thinking about a Future World where all food for kids and adults alike will be 100% Certified Healthful, nutritious and non-toxic.
The fact is, this drek was how families expressed their Love for each other. Love On A Plate. The Food Of The Future will be better for everybody's circulatory system -- but Where Will The Edible Love Be?
It's no accident that the most delicious stuff was All Fat and All Sugar. That's what Mother's Milk is all about, and for the rest of our lives, we taste fat and sugar, and the deepest parts of our psyche remembers those happiest of all life's moments at our mother's breast.
The Canadian biologist Suzuki said on his "Nature of Things" TV series that we've recognized the significance of serum cholesterol, and been measuring it, since about 1900. Only once in all that time did a nation's Average Cholesterol ever go down -- during the German occupation of Europe in World War II, when the Germans shipped all the meat animals back to Germany, and forced the rest of Europe to be vegetarians.
In all other times, the most natural and human consequence of Bounty and Prosperity is, ironically, Fried Dough, Schlachteplatte, cotton candy, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, Coca-Cola, KFC, a Quarter-Pounder, French Fries, Dunkin Donuts, and Bad Health.
Boston Cream Pie. Banana Creme Pie. Strawberry Upside Down Cake. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.
Looks very much like the thing we serve in CH during the Carnival season. In my home dialect they are called chnöiblätze, but the name and recipe varies from region to region
As for the Schlachtplatte: Wanna see something that will make your cholesterine level go bonkers ? it is known as Berner Platte: various types of sausages, bacon, beans, sauerkraut and potatoes. Yammm (Bob will get an image)
(Oh and Happy 1st to any Swiss wh is passing Vleeptron)
Oh my...I'm fairly certain my doctor doesn't want me eating that, although it sounds good!
You think someone could come up with a healthier (yet just as tasty) alternative? Whole wheat dough or something? Powdered...aspartame...instead of sugar?
Amy...you're missing the point!
Don't tell your doctor! Whatever you do, brush the powdered sugar off your clothes before you go in to your appointment!
(Whole wheat, aspertame covered fried dough?)
Yeah, Fried Dough and those Humungous mitteleuropean Sausage platters -- this is X-treme Food, bunji-jumping off the George Washington Bridge Food (but with a Big Smile). You certainly never want any doctor to even hear a rumor that you're still eating anything like this.
But...but...but...
I know if I were to start eating one bit of those, I'd have zero self control and eat everything in sight! And I'm on a diet dang it! Don't tempt me!
Okay...what's prompting this outburst about the fatty fried and sugary food you ask? I decided that, yes, Bob is right about finding a cure for the diabetes thing...my doctor gave me a heart attack the other day when she said my blood sugar was HIGH...AHHHHHHHHHHH! That sent pangs of fear throughout my whole body...so that's why I'm self imposing a sugar-free diet.
:)
well, of course your doctor is The Woman for all your endocrinological needs, but I don't think i can be charged with practicing medicine without a license by giving Young Amy some Good News: You probably have lots of Tip-Top Health ahead of you with Diet and Exercise alone. If you're not riding a bike or doing a regular exercise thing, start doing it now.
Yeah, I was only trying to steer you into diabetes research to put you Ahead Of The Career Curve.
Like my nephew Ice Cube, the glaciologist ... I still for the life of me can't figure out how, twelve years ago, he chose glaciology. Back then, it must have been so Who Cares. Now suddenly the whole world wants to interview him, and when Al Gore becomes the next president, Ice Cube will be appointed Secretary of Global Warming.
Let's all shed a tear for all that wonderful Food From The Past that we can never taste again. What wonderful times -- when we were too ignorant to know why it was so naughty. I guess you could call the end of that delicious era The Bill Clinton Years, when he'd interrupt his daily jog to knock back a quick one at Burger King or KFC.
Okay Amy -- 5 miles on the bike today.
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