The Fried Dough Ho

I have really great friends. It is a pretty fabulous friend who, knowing she is driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco makes a special stop just to bring The Ho a Bay Area rarity, Portuguese Doughnuts known as Malasadas. It was my buddy, Lisa, who did just that. A few days before my birthday, when Lisa was visiting family down south and stopped at Natas Pastries in Sherman Oaks. Here in the Bay Area, the only Portuguese Bakeries I can locate seem to be in Hayward or Santa Clara, cities I just don’t get to very often (okay, those are cities I don’t ever remember having gone to at all).

So I was pretty stoked when, after a 6+ hour drive, Lisa deposits on my doorstep a small white box filled with three Portuguese malasadas (also known as malazadas or malassadas). History has them being produced for the first time on the Island of Madeira and the Azores. As with many of the other  European-centric doughnut offerings, it is said that the malasadas originated by the necessity of using up sugar and lard before Lent, making them classically served for Mardi Gras.

Like my recently-prepared Pączki, these yeast-risen offerings are supposed to include a great deal of egg yolks and heavy cream. And while I greatly enjoyed the Natas malasadas that Lisa procured for me, now that I have tasted a REAL egg and cream-based doughnut, I am inclined to believe that these from a store have come from a different recipe. They are more like the standard bombolini I have been trying of late; very light and fluffy with a tender crumb. Two of the ones Lisa brought were just the fried dough while the third, larger one was filled with custard. Dusted with granulated sugar and even despite a very lengthy car ride, these were very rich, excellently-prepared doughnuts. The custard was not too sweet and quite rich. In some fashion, I much preferred these over the bombolini and continue to be very appreciate and grateful of my darling friend, Lisa.

As part of the planned events surrounding the Birthday of The Ho was my abject desire to fry my own dough for the first time. At first, I thought of just trying some basic recipe just for experimentation purposes. Then I stumbled upon a Polish festival and learned about a glorious fried dough known as Pączki. I learned that the incredibly rich, egg-based, alcohol-laden pastries are rarely seen these days, even in “the old country.” The Poles I spoke with told me that because of the need for mass-production, very few pastry shops even bother with the authentic recipe and I knew that I had to. I hunted around and found what seemed a fairly decent recipe…

Ingredients
12 egg yolks (or six whole eggs)
1 teaspoon salt
2 (1/4 ounce) packages active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1/3 cup room temperature butter
1/2 cup fine granulated sugar
4 1/2 cups all purpose flower
1/3 cup rum or brandy
1 cup scalded whipping cream
1 1/2 cups preserves or cooked prunes, cooked apples, or poppy seed filling

oil for deep frying

1. Whisk egg yolks with salt with electric mixture on high until it lightens, approximately 7 to 10 minutes.

2. Please yeast in warm water to soften.

3. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar until sugar completely dissolves and mixture is light and fluffy.

4. Slowly add in the softened yeast.

5. Stir in one cup of flour with the rum/brandy and half the cream. Continue stirring until smooth.

6. Add another cup of flour and the remaining cream, beat until smooth.

7. Add another cup of flour with the egg mixture and beat until well-blended, at least two minutes.

8. Continually add in the remaining one-and-one-half cup of flour while blending until the dough begins to blister.

9. Cover and set in a warm place to rise, until dough has doubled in bulk.

10. Punch down and let rise again, until doubled in bulk.

11. Roll the dough out to 3/4 of an inch thick and cut into 3″ rounds.

12. Place a tablespoon of filling the center of one circle and top with a second circle. Seal with a bit of water.

13. Place on a lightly floured surface, cover, and let rise another 20 or 30 minutes.

14. Heat oil to 350º and fry the paczki  until they are golden brown on both sides.

15. Drain and sprinkle with powdered sugar or drizzle with honey.

(more…)

One of the top destination restaurants in the city for the last six months has been Melissa Perillo’s Frances. I had the distinct pleasure to dine at the Fifth Floor under Perillo’s command and was looking forward to experiencing her new endeavor. The reservations at Frances are booked up weeks in advance and it is only the fact that a handful of bar seats are left open for first-come diners that enabled me to plan my birthday celebration.  Lisa and I arrived a few minutes before they opened and a line had already been established for a few of those choice non-reservation seats. We were lucky, getting a great seat at the bar with an optimal view down the hallway and into the kitchen where we could watch the action of waitstaff, Chef Perillo, and her kitchen crew. Ironically, June 1st was also Fraces’ sixth month anniversary so I felt that much more special celebrating along with them.

Bobby was our server behind the bar and when I explained that we were not eating an entire meal service but had only come in as part of my Fried Dough Ho obsession, he smiled with a twinkle in his eye and whisked away the menus, “I know exactly what you are having then,” he chuckled. While we waited, we savored a small, round shot glass full of their daily Market Shot – a concoction of fresh fruit juices and a touch of alcohol. Pixie mandarin, Meyer lemon, blood orange, pommeau, and Pedro Ximenez sherry. Also while we were waiting, we were served a small bowl of sage-scented roasted almonds; hard to not eat a lot of but I knew we had a long, dining night ahead of us.

Before I knew it, we were presented with two offerings, the rather infamous Applewood Smoked Bacon Beignets served with maple crème fraîche studded with chives and Panisse Frites, crispy chickpea fritters served with Meyer lemon aïoli. It was hard to choose which one to bite into first, but since it was the beignets that brought us here, I succumbed to the golden globes of goodness. These were tender, light and with tiny bits of bacon speckled throughout. So often a beignet can have a chewy, hard exterior but here, it was silky and rich. The accompanying maple crème fraîche was especially decadent, worthy of licking off one’s fingers (as Lisa will attest).

The chickpea fritters were a revelation. I know what beignets are supposed to taste like. And I know what the classic hush puppy-like fritter tastes like. Making a fritter from chickpeas, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery. Is it a matter of frying a hummus-like concoction? What is used to bind the chickpeas into the perfectly square logs? Dusted in a bit of cornmeal, the exterior was crunchy and firm but the interior was the surprise — absolutely creamy and smooth, almost molten; the way I have tasted fried goat cheese in the past.  Several minutes into savoring, that almost liquid-like interior never dissipated or hardened, the way a molten cheese would. The Meyer lemon aïoli is a natural complement to the rich flavors of the garbanzo, providing a bright counterbalance to the redolent fritter.

Lastly, a note on service. Everybody — and I mean everybody — was smiling. Big, bountiful, we-are-really-happy-to-be-here smiles. It was infectious. There is so much to be said for a restaurant when the general goodwill pervades the atmosphere. I was feeling a tad guilty about coming in for only a few courses, but Bobby was not only amenable, but helpful and understanding. Watching us enjoy the fried goodness, he knew we would be back for more and it is my hope to go back sooner. If the fried dough offerings were this exceptional, the rest of the menu will undoubtedly knock my socks off.

When I wrote about the Bombolini at I Preferiti di Boriana, available from the Ferry Plaza, I mistakenly believed they were the only bombolini available. I learned that Arlequin Café, the smaller to-go sister version of Absinthe, has a booth at the Ferry Plaza on Saturdays and offers a multitude of baked goods as well as their version of the Bombolini.

I got their early last Saturday as rumors had it they run out early. It was a shockingly cold day for mid-May and the fact that San Francisco was still experiencing freakishly winter-like later this late in spring is an important factor I’ll touch upon later. There were a few more flavors to choose from than I Preferiti and while I would normally dive right into the raspberry jam, I thought it more important to judge against the custard; most bakeries buy their jam while only a bakery of any worth prepares their own custards from scratch. I was also very intrigued with the Maple Bacon – how could I not be?

Instead of a granulated sugar dusting, these have a very light glaze. It was nice that it was not too heavy or sweet. The cake was dense and not as light as I would have predicted. They were also cold. As was the filling. Too cold, actually. This was my reference to the weather. I asked if they knew when the doughnuts had been fried and no one was quite sure. It is entirely possible that they were made, filled and then refrigerated. Or, at least, that the filling was refrigerated because the flavors were muted. The Bacon Maple was quite lovely, with bits of bacon redolent in the rich, but subdued maple cream.

I also asked if these were available at the store during the week. I have great hopes of trying them warm or fresh. It will require a little investigation and I hope that they are not made solely for the Ferry Plaza as the volume with which they have to be prepared makes it so they have to be done so too far beforehand to be truly exceptional. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and wander down to the Café soon.\