Cartellate

Cartellate are strips of dough rolled to a millimetre or less, folded lengthwise, pinched at regular intervals to create a row of little windows, then coiled into a rose six to eight centimetres across. They are fried, then dipped while still warm into vincotto (grape or fig must cooked down to a syrup) or into warmed honey.

The dough is deliberately poor and eggless: flour, extra virgin olive oil, warm white wine, a pinch of salt. No sugar goes into it at all, because all the sweetness arrives at the end. This matters more than it sounds: the pastry stays neutral and brittle, and the syrup runs through it without meeting any competing sweetness.

The shape is functional, not decorative. Those pinched windows create dozens of small pockets that trap syrup, which is why a properly made cartellata keeps releasing vincotto for two or three days after dipping, while a flat fried ribbon sheds it onto the tray within an hour.

They are strictly seasonal. Production starts around 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and stops after Epiphany. Outside those weeks, almost nobody in Puglia makes them.

The first impression is texture, not flavour: a shattering, blistered crispness on the ridges and a soft, syrup-soaked centre where the pockets have filled. Because the dough itself is unsweetened, the sweetness arrives in a single wave and then recedes.

With grape vincotto the flavour is dark and faintly sour, closer to balsamic vinegar or pomegranate molasses than to sugar syrup: raisin, fig, a tannic edge at the back. With fig vincotto it is rounder, jammier, more obviously sweet. With honey it is floral and lighter, and the fried dough comes through much more clearly.

There is a savoury undertow throughout, from the olive oil in the dough and the olive oil they are fried in. It stops the sweetness from becoming cloying and is the reason two or three cartellate feel like a reasonable portion rather than one.

Eaten on the day they are made they are crisp and a little hollow; on day three they are at their best, the syrup having migrated inward and the pastry softened without collapsing.

Serve them at room temperature, on a flat tray, ideally in a single layer. They are fragile and they stick, so stacking crushes the ridges and welds the roses together.

Eat them with your fingers, and give them two or three days. This is the one fried sweet in the Italian repertoire that improves with time: the syrup migrates into the pockets, the pastry softens just enough, and the flavour rounds out. Straight from the vincotto bath they are good; on day three they are what they are supposed to be.

Decoration stays minimal: ground cinnamon, chopped toasted almonds, grated orange zest, or the coloured aniseed sprinkles Apulians call diavolilli. Icing sugar has no place here and dissolves into streaks on the syrup.

If you are making them, fry a batch and set it aside undipped: undipped cartellate stay crisp in a tin for three or four weeks and can be steeped on demand, which is how Apulian households keep a fresh tray going from Christmas to Epiphany. Leftovers break into shards over fresh sheep's ricotta or fiordilatte gelato.

There are two states and they keep completely differently. Fried but undipped, cartellate are dry pastry: an airtight tin at room temperature holds them crisp for three or four weeks, which is how Apulian households ration them from Christmas to Epiphany, steeping a fresh tray as needed. Dipped in vincotto or honey they go into a covered container in a single layer, with baking paper between layers if you must stack, and they sit at room temperature rather than in the fridge, reckoned locally at about two weeks.

Dipped, they change for the better for a while and then keep changing. Over the first two or three days the syrup works into the pockets and the pastry softens from brittle to yielding, which is when Apulians consider them ready; after a week or two it has gone all the way and the rose is soft throughout, with the fried notes faded. The syrup itself darkens and thickens as water leaves it. Undipped ones simply stale, losing their snap and taking up humidity from the air. Neither version wants the fridge, which softens pastry fast, and neither freezes usefully.

A cartellata is a rose: one long strip of thin dough with a fluted edge, pinched shut at intervals so the strip forms a chain of open pockets, then wound into a spiral about six to eight centimetres across. Those pockets are the whole design, because they hold the syrup. The dough carries no eggs, only flour, white wine and olive oil, so it fries pale gold and stays hard rather than puffing. Under vincotto it turns glossy dark brown; under honey, amber and lighter.

In an Italian bakery abroad it sits next to things it is not. Chiacchiere or frappe are flat ribbons under icing sugar, struffoli are small honey coated balls from Naples, and Greek diples are rolled ribbons. Read the coating on the box: vincotto, cooked grape must, is the Apulian original and tastes bittersweet with an edge, while honey versions are simply sweet, and a fig syrup version exists too. Baked rather than fried ones are dry and matte. Boxes from Puglia run $16 to $30 a kilo and appear only from late November.

In Puglia, from any pasticceria between 8 December and Epiphany, at 20 to 32 euro a kilo. A half-kilo tray is fifteen to twenty roses and costs 12 to 16 euro. Outside those weeks, they simply are not sold.

Abroad they are rare and strictly seasonal. Italian delis in the US stock them in December at roughly 16 to 26 dollars a pound; in the UK expect 28 to 45 pounds a kilo, usually in gift tins. Online Italian grocers ship them from Puglia in December, and they travel well because the vincotto acts as a preservative.

Vincotto itself is far easier to find than the pastry: Italian specialists in London and New York carry Apulian grape and fig vincotto year-round at 8 to 16 euro for half a litre. Read the label: anything listing glucose syrup and caramel colour instead of cooked must tastes flat and is a different product.

Bari in December is the obvious place: the pasticcerie of the old town and of via Sparano fill their windows with trays from 8 December onwards, and the Murgia towns inland (Altamura, Gravina, Bitonto) do the same.

In the Salento, around Lecce, Nardò and Maglie, the standard finish is fig vincotto, darker and deeper than the grape version used further north. Tasting both on one trip is the quickest way to understand the sweet.

The Christmas markets in Lecce and the village fairs across the Murgia in mid-December are the best chance to watch cartellate being pinched and coiled by hand, which explains the price better than any label can.