The Tyrol: Fanzieutes da leva (Groedner-style Raised Doughnuts)

This is yet another of the fat-rich recipes that mountain peoples develop to make sure they get enough calories to burn in the frigid winter weather.

In the Tyrolean Alps, the preferred frying fat would have been lard rather than oil, which would have been too expensive to bring up from the lowlands -- and unnecessary, anyway, when pigs were the most popular and easily raised local meat. These doughnuts -- flat discs with a thin middle but no hole -- are a good way to make a little flour go a long way: also a plus when wheat flour is an expensive and limited resource. They fry up beautifully and are very good sprinkled with sugar. (Some local variants of the recipe call for fruit jam to be spooned into the depression in the middle of the doughnut after it's cooled, as in the image to the right.)

Fanzieutes da leva (the Ladin name of the doughnuts) are also known as vaschetta frite (in Italian) or kniekiechl (in German).

For the doughnuts:

• 500 grams flour

• 30 grams fresh yeast or a package of dry quick yeast
• 3 egg yolks
• 50 grams of butter, melted
• Grated zest of a lemon
• 250ml milk
• Sufficient deep fat for frying (normal vegetable oil works fine, but if you feel like going whole hog and using lard, more power to you)

Warm the milk to blood temperature and add to the yeast, allowing it to sit for 15 minutes, until the yeast starts to become active and begins bubbling.

Sift the flour into a bowl: make a well in the flour, add the yeast and milk mixture, cover with a little of the flour, and allow the yeast to develop further for half an hour or so, making a "sponge".

Then mix the sponge down. Add to this mixture the egg yolks, the butter, the lemon zest, and some more warmed milk, mixing everything very thoroughly. If necessary, add some more milk to make sure the dough is the right consistency. Cover and allow to rise.

Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead quickly: then break off small same-sized pieces, round into balls, cover with a towel and allow to rise again. Heat the fat.

Flatten the dough balls, and with both hands pinch the centers to thin them out, turning each flattened piece to make sure that the depression is of an even thickness on all sides, and the outer edges of the doughnut bulge. (Don't make a hole, though.)

When the fat is hot, use a ladle or skimmer to lower the doughnuts into the hot fat. Fry them into they puff up nicely into a sort of "hat" shape. Remove them and drain on a paper towel.

Sprinkle with granulated or powdered sugar, as you prefer, and serve. Or allow to cool and spoon jam into the depression of each doughnut. Then sift a little powdered sugar over them and serve.