The Night of the Sfingi

The evening entertainment is basically over. That means that the evening food fest after the entertainment is basically over. But wait. That can't be. The men had been doing all the cooking of cutting of melons of picking up the pizza's, so last night it must have been the women's turn. Still no entertainment, but folks wandered down to the Cavea at about 9:30, because the word was out, Gilda and her crew were going to make sfingi and pignonlatte.

Gilda is, apparently, the best sfingi and pignonlatte maker in all of Sciacca, although I have been unable to trace down the rumor that she was retired as Agrigento's Champion Sfingi maker after winning the title five years in a row, and has permanent possession of the Golden Sfingi Trophy.

Having said that, this is, of course, a picture of her making the pignonlatte. She is also known around the complex for her ability with this little gem of a pastry. Everyone was excited that she was making them, and even more excited that we were going to get to eat them.

For those of you who do not know, sfingi is a typical Sicilian pastry, which is basically fried dough (like a donut) which is then covered in sugar and honey. I remember Ma making them for us in Dunkirk, but we usually were not there when she was making them, and we always ate them after they had cooled off. They were delicious then, but they are even better warm.

The pignonlatte, which must get their name from looking like little pine nuts, well, sort of, are small balls of fairly compact dough, that are again coated, indeed drowned, in honey and sugar, and in last night's case, sprinkles like you can get, or at least used to be able to get, on your ice cream cone at Carvel's.

Of course Gilda had a lot of help, but even with all the women pitching in, the crowd kept growing increasingly restless. She had made a huge pot of sfingi, which were kept in the pot to keep them warm, and two women were assigned to guard the pot from the men, who would have liked to open it and just taste the sfingi to make sure they were alright.

The pignonlatte were put in little cups, like cup cake cups, with about ten pingonlatte in each cup. It looked like they had made about 200 such cups. Lord only knows how many of the sfingi were made, but there were a lot of them.

Finally, every thing was ready, and the sfingi and pignonlatte were taken out to the table, where of course there was also water and wine and soda to drink. There were two sizes of sfingi plates, small ones with three sfingi on them for single people, and large ones with six sfingi on them for couples. So of course single people took two smaller plates, and couples took two larger plates. But it was alright, it seemed like there were enough to go around.

The crowd came up to the table, and there was quite a bit of jostling to get the fresh confections. It was pretty amusing. Of course, as cameraman, Gilda had made sure that I got to preview what I was taking pictures of, so I did not have to join in the rush. From a distance, it seemed like a feeding frenzy by a group of sharks. And then it ended. Folks seemed sated. The table was no longer surrounded. I was actually surprised by that. I went up to look, and found out the reason. The pignonlatte were almost gone, and the sfingi were history.
The sfingi pot is to the right. After
took this picture, several people
looked in the pot to see if there
were any left.

BRAVA GILDA for a job well done. We all loved the sfingi and the pignonlatte, as one can plainly see.