You hear it before you smell it: the batter dripping into hot oil and frying on contact. Then the hand goes round, wide at first and then tighter and tighter, and in thirty seconds there is a golden spiral the size of a dinner plate in the pan. Icing sugar, a spoonful of jam in the middle, and on to the next one.
That is what fortaie are: a fair-day sweet, a late-October sweet, a Carnival sweet, made in the Belluno valleys out of four things that are already in the house. This is not pastry work — it is a technique, and the technique lives in the funnel.
At a glance
- Type: fried sweet
- Where: Agordino and the Biois Valley
- Prep: 15 min
- Rest: 30 min
- Frying: 2-3 min each
- Makes: 6-8
What fortaie are
They are spiral fritters. A batter — as runny as crêpe batter but slightly thicker — is poured in one continuous thread into hot oil in ever-tightening concentric circles. What comes out is a lacy disc, crisp at the edges and soft where the coils overlap.
The name shifts from valley to valley — fortaie, fortaje, or simply “spiral fritters” — and the same sweet exists across the German-speaking Alps under the name Strauben. In the Agordino and the Biois Valley it belongs to village festivals: at Se Desmonteghea in Falcade the fortaie have their own slot in the Saturday and Sunday afternoon programme, right beside the marquee.
The ingredients
The version recorded by the Falcade tourist board — the Biois Valley one — is disarmingly brief: white flour, two eggs, a little yeast, some sugar, lemon zest and very little water. No quantities, because the batter has always been made by eye, adding liquid until it runs off the funnel the right way.
For anyone without a grandmother on hand, here are quantities that work. They are indicative — the traditional recipe gives none, and what you are aiming at is a consistency, not a gram.
Ingredients (indicative, makes 6-8)
- 250 g plain white flour
- 2 eggs
- 30 g sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder (or 5 g fresh yeast dissolved in the warm liquid)
- grated zest of half a lemon
- a pinch of salt
- about 200 ml warm water, added little by little
- seed oil for frying
- icing sugar and redcurrant jam to serve
How to make them
- The batter. Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the flour sifted with the baking powder, the salt and the lemon zest. Pour in the warm water in a thin stream, mixing, until the batter is smooth and fluid: it should fall from the spoon in an unbroken ribbon, not in drops. Cover and rest for half an hour.
- The oil. Heat the oil in a wide, shallow pan — two fingers deep is enough. The right temperature is around 170-175 °C. Without a thermometer: a drop of batter should rise immediately in a ring of bubbles, without browning in two seconds.
- The spiral. Pour the batter into a funnel, keeping the spout closed with a finger. Hold it over the oil, release, and move your hand in a wide circle and then in tighter and tighter ones towards the centre. Close the hole with your finger to cut the thread.
- Frying. Just under a minute on one side, then turn the fortaia with two forks and repeat. It should go blond, not dark.
- Draining and serving. A few seconds on kitchen paper, then straight onto the plate: a snowfall of icing sugar and a spoonful of redcurrant jam in the middle.
Three things that make the difference
- Batter consistency is everything. Too runny and the thread breaks into drops; too thick and it will not leave the funnel. Test with a spoon before you fill it.
- The funnel wants a hole of about half a centimetre. Mountain hardware shops still sell the proper one with a lever; failing that, a kitchen funnel and a finger will do, or a plastic bottle with a small hole in the cap.
- One at a time. Put two in the pan and the temperature collapses: the fortaia soaks up oil instead of frying.
What to eat them with
The Biois Valley version calls for icing sugar and redcurrant jam, and there is a logic to it: the sharpness of the redcurrant cuts through the frying and the sugar. Lingonberries, raspberries or a slightly tart apple compote work too. What does not work is a jam that is too sweet — it flattens everything.
Eat them hot, with your hands, pulling off one ring at a time. Cold, they lose their crispness and never get it back: fortaie are not a dessert you make the night before.
A poor man’s sweet, like most of ours
Like the crostòi, fortaie belong to the family of home-fried sweets: flour, eggs, a little sugar, and the frying oil as the only luxury. They were the sweet of special occasions — the village fair, Carnival, the end of the alpine grazing season — precisely because frying cost money, and you did not do it on an ordinary day.
They are one piece of the popular traditions of the Dolomiti Bellunesi that has survived better than most, perhaps because it is a show: the spiral forming in the oil is a small piece of magic, and at village festivals there is always someone standing in front of the fortaie stall just watching, rather than queueing.
Sources
- Fortaie — Promo Falcade (the traditional Biois Valley recipe)
- Se Desmonteghea — Promo Falcade (fortaie in the festival programme)
Cover image: fortaie (Strauben) at the farmers’ market in Lana. Photo: Benreis, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.