A food from Modena; it is also found around Emilia, with names like crescenta or even pizza fritta. Gnocco fritto is obtained by deep frying thin squares of leavened dough. The dough puffs and becomes crisp. It is then served warm and eaten with an assortment of cured pork meats such as prosciutto, salame, mortadella and ciccioli. In more frugal times, hardened leftover of gnocco fritto from the previous night were eaten at breakfast with caffellatte (and it is surprisingly good)

While the original recipe used almost surely leftover bread dough and frying was done with strutto (melted and reconstructed pork fat), nowadays frying is often done with vegetable oil, while there are literally dozen of recipes for the dough - I have had reasonable success using regular pizza dough but I am not really proud of my accomplisehment.

Gnocco fritto is found in restaurant around the Modena area, always coupled with tigelle.

I was quite surprised at being served something closely resembling gnocco fritto in a restaurant close to the Monument Valley National Park, as a typical Navajo dessert (to be eaten with honey...)

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