Brustengo

Brustengo is a humble specialty of rural Umbria, rooted in the cucina povera of the Gubbio district and the upper Tiber valley, where flour, water and a hot pan were enough to make something to eat. It is, in essence, the local form of a fried flour-and-water batter found across the region under a string of dialect names: arvoltolo around Valfabbrica, berlingozzo at San Giustino, brustengolo at Panicale, frittella at Gualdo Tadino, and bragaccio or fregnaccia at Giano dell'Umbria. The savory Gubbio brustengo should not be confused with the sweet Perugian brustengolo, a baked or fried corn-flour cake studded with apple and dried fruit; the two share a similar name and rustic origin but are different dishes. Some country versions of the savory fritter add a little cornmeal to the wheat batter, but the everyday Gubbio brustengo is a plain flour-and-water affair, and its origin is undocumented beyond this peasant tradition.

Hot from the fat, it is thin and lacy, crisp and blistered at the edges where the batter ran thin, and softer and chewier toward the middle. The taste is plain and savory — fried dough, a hint of pork fat — which is the whole point: it is a foil. Drape a slice of prosciutto or salami over the warm fritter so the fat just begins to soften, add a shard of sharp pecorino, and the richness and salt of the cured meat play against the bland, crisp bread. Eaten straight away it crackles; left to sit it goes leathery and loses the point.

A thin flour-and-water batter dropped into hot fat sets fast: the water at the surface flashes to steam and the dough crisps, while the bubbling drives the lacy holes and blistered edges, and the dry starch surface browns through the Maillard reaction to give the fried flavor and color. Fat is the cooking medium, not an ingredient stirred in, so it must be properly hot before the batter goes in — too cool and the fritter soaks up grease and turns heavy and oily instead of crisping. Frying in rendered pork fat rather than oil, as the older country method does, lends a faint savory note of its own; the batter is left thin and unleavened so the result is a flat, crisp sheet rather than a puffed, bready fritter.