Let's make Carnival Cenci and Florentine Rice Fritters together!

On Sunday we will be cooking together and frying tons of rice fritters and Carnival Cenci. Here you can find the two recipes and the link to access the Cook Along.

Hello friends! While I type, the countryside around me is grey and quite gloomy, I have a chamomile tea next to my notebook, but if I close my eyes I can almost smell that tempting fried, sugary aroma of rice fritters and thin, crisp cenci that invades the town streets, wafting from every bakery and pastry shop. It makes my heart sing. It’s Carnival time, and, to me, this doesn’t mean masquerades and parades but planning when to make my annual batch of fried sweet treats. The best words to describe Carnival in Italy are indeed sweet and fried.

Even though Carnival has never been my favorite time of the year, now we have a reason to celebrate and attend Carnival parades and parties in the town streets: a three-year-old girl who loves Spider-Man and all the Marvel heroes, and who chose to masquerade as her favorite superhero. Livia was so proud of her fake soft muscles and loved throwing confetti at her best friend in Piazza della Cisterna in San Gimignano.

Speaking of Carnival… on Sunday we will meet for the second Cook Along of the year, all about Tuscan Carnival treats.

If you are new to Letters from Tuscany, our monthly cook-along is a very informal, fun, chatty moment when we cook together, but you can join just to have a chat, or a laugh, ask questions, share stories, or simply listen while having a good cup of tea (or wine, according to which time zone you are in!)

What’s going on here at Letters from Tuscany

A quick reminder: the book we picked for our February Italian Cookbook Club is Viola Buitoni’s Italy by Ingredient: Artisanal Foods, Modern Recipes, published by Rizzoli. If you want to search for the next cookbooks, this is what we will be reading next:

• MARCH. Olivia Cavalli, Stagioni: Contemporary Italian Cooking to Celebrate the Seasons.

• APRIL. Fabrizia Lanza, The Food of Sicily: Recipes from a Sun-Drenched Culinary Crossroads.

With our Italian Cookbook Club, we aim to introduce you to new and old cookbooks about Italian cuisine, ingredients, and traditions. It won’t be all about the latest trends, but we will pick good, reliable, timeless cookbooks worth adding to your collection.

We will discuss the books and recipes in the Chat here on Substack, where you will be able to upload photos of the recipes you picked and tried, notes, and comments. Every month, I will also share one or two recipes here in the newsletter for you to cook from and to give a sense of the book (two recipes from Viola’s cookbook coming next week!)

But back to the Cook Along!

We will meet SUNDAY, February 11th at 9.00 pm CET - 3.00 pm EST - 12.00 pm PST.

We will be making two of the most typical Tuscan Carnival treats: the Florentine rice fritters, dotted with raisins and with a subtle citrus aroma, and Cenci, known also in Italy as chiacchiere, galani, frappe, lattughe… thin, crisp rugs of dough covered in sugar and scented with citrus zest.

In less than two hours, we will recreate together a Tuscan Carnival feast, making from scratch and frying those treats that, at this moment of the year, are a fixture of every bakery and pastry shop in Tuscany. I’ll share all my tips on how to make thin, crisp cenci and creamy rice fritters, and you’ll be able to add two more recipes to your Italian cooking repertoire.

We moved our Cook Along to Zoom, so a recording of the class will be available for all paid subscribers after the event, and it will be easier to attend the Cook Along even though you live Down Under. (Here you can see the recording of our previous Cook Along when we made ricotta gnocchi and spinach and ricotta gnudi)

Replay! Ricotta Gnocchi and Spinach and Ricotta Gnudi

REPLAY! Carnival Cenci and Florentine Rice Fritters

This is an event designed for those who subscribed to Letters from Tuscany: we’re slowly building friendships and shared memories and having lots of fun!

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU WILL BE THERE, SO I’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU!

At the end of the Cook Along we’ll decide together the theme for the next cook along, so don’t miss it! Also, use the comments for any questions regarding ingredients, tools, and methods before our Cook Along.

(If you are a paid subscriber, you can find the recipes, the ingredient lists, the Cook-Along Working Sheet, and the link to join the Cook Along and Live Talk behind the paywall.)

Below you can find the two recipes we will be making together.

[RECIPE] Frittelle di riso fiorentine – Florentine rice fritters

The only thing I like about Carnival