Italian Donuts

With Felicia Mohan

These are considered a special treat by Felicia Ciaramitaro Mohan’s family, especially her son BJ, who helps make this recipe. Every Sunday, especially on religious holidays such as Easter Sunday, Grandfather Joe would make these special donuts “for us (seven Grandchildren) on Sunday mornings. This is one of many treats he and my grandmother Felicia would make for Sunday coffee time after Sunday Mass.” The special ingredient in these homemade donuts is ricotta cheese. It is mixed into the batter and makes for a very moist and tasty round donut, which is rolled into powdered sugar right after frying them in oil.

“My Grandfather passed away when I was in high school. When my twins were born many years later, I remember counting the months till they could have table food so I could make them to enjoy on Sunday mornings and Holiday mornings just as I did growing up.”

“My kids enjoy them just as much as my cousins bother & I did. My daughter Amanda knows how to make the batter, BJ is a professional donut powdered and my husband is defiantly the best at eating them! With our busy schedules traveling with our daughter Amanda for tennis, Sunday mornings as a family are tough to fit in. In spite of this, everyone knows, including my nieces Eloise & Madeline, that when TeTe, Uncle Barry, BJ & Amanda are home on a Sunday donuts are being made while the sauce and meatballs are cooking for our family dinner!”

You may want to try them for a special day such as Easter or at any time you want to make a special treat.

Ingredients

1 15-ounce ricotta cheese
4 eggs
1 tablespoon Vanilla
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 pound powdered sugar

Instructions

1. Sift flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and set aside.
2. In a small bowl, using a wire whisk beat the eggs and vanilla for one minute.
3. Add the ricotta cheeses and egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Using a large spoon or electric hand mixer, incorporate all ingredients together for 2 to 3 minutes. The batter will look very thick. Cover batter with plastic wrap and let it rest on counter for 20 min.
4. Place powder sugar in a large pie plate and set aside.
5. Line a dish with paper towels and set aside.
6. Pour La Spagnolia oil in a very deep pot (about 3 inches) and heat oil on high.
7. Using a 1-inch cookie scoop, drop scant scoops of batter directly into hot oil. Using a spider spatula continuously move donuts around to evenly cook till deep golden brown.
8. Carefully remove golden donuts from hot oil onto prepared paper toweled pie plate to remove excess oil.
9. Immediately roll hot donuts into powder sugar, and  enjoy!!!

Recipe courtesy of Felicia Ciaramitaro Mohan, 2011.

From "Food For Thought" Column by Heather Atwood: Felicia Mohan lives in a sparkling new house in Gloucester, and has twin 11-year-olds: Amanda, playing 12-year-old tennis and ranked No. 32 in New England, and B.J., a catcher for AAU Baseball who will play in the Gloucester All-Star 11-year-old team. Felicia looks like a beautiful, modern mother, struggling to get her kids where they need to go while keeping up with life at home, but Felicia is also adamant about preserving her family's Sicilian heritage, particularly the dishes her grandmother, another Felicia, prepared. Felicia Mohan's grandfathers were named Joseph Salvatore Ciaramitaro — both of them, spelled the exact same way. One Joseph fished first from his boat The Benjamin and Josephine, which was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Maine, and then he fished from his Benjamin C, named after his father-in-law, Benjamin Cucuru. Later he founded Capt'n Joe's Lobster Co. on the wharf in Gloucester, now run by Felicia's brother, Joey, and cousin Frankie. Felicia's other grandfather owned Pat's Center Grocery, that not only sold groceries but provided all the fishing boats with food for their long trips, delivering the "speza," as the supplies were called, to each boat before it left port.
Grandpa with the wharf was married to Felicia's namesake. Holidays at this Felicia's house began a full week ahead as all the women in the family gathered at her home, which had two full kitchens, to cook together. When school let out at 3, the children went straight to Grandma's house that week because that's where their mothers were cooking. Not only were these women making all the traditional Italian holiday foods, from appetizers such as octopus salad, a standard which the men insisted upon at every holiday, to a wealth of Italian cookies, homemade bread, and New World foods such as pies, but the women were also making ordinary dinners those weeknights for all their husbands and children. Felicia and Joseph have passed away. Now, holiday meals are at young Felicia's, where 35 to 40 people come to celebrate. Felicia, like her grandmother, still sets a formal table with china and linen; her custom-built table seats 25, with two more tables in the great room for overflow, replacing her grandmother's enormous table that started in the kitchen, extended through the dining room, the hallway and ended at the living room. In her large, creamy, new kitchen, Felicia still makes dishes like braciole, spiedini, and olive gonzathe. She makes videos for this newspaper showing how to prepare her grandmother's special bread crumbs, "mudiga," with chicken and steak. This past December, Felicia gathered all the cousins together to make their great-grandmother's Santa Lucia dessert, "cuccia," a vanilla pudding made with wheatberries which the playful great-grandmother had always encouraged the children to eat in a race. Contact Heather at heatheraa@aol.com. Her blog is at gloucestertimes.com/foodforthought