Today Annie Mitchell and I chatted about Pope Francis and his legacy. Here’s a Q&A of our talk, along with a fun recipe for a pastry that the Pope loved as a child. It has an interesting analogy!

We continue to honor the life and legacy of Pope Francis here on the Morning Show, and we’ve been doing our best to remember that since we are the Church, the body of Christ, that this is a death in the family.  And when a loved one dies, oftentimes it’s the little things that you remember most fondly, don’t you think?

Yes.  And in many cases, some of those little things that will easily come to mind after they’re gone will be their favorite foods – or the foods that they were ‘famous’ for making.  Think of how many of us love to cook Grandma’s famous casserole or something like that… many families pass down recipes from generation to generation.  Using those recipes is a great way to stay connected to family members from long ago.

And so with that in mind, as we try to honor the memory of Pope Francis, we’re going to remember him with food, and you’ve got a couple of recipes you can share if someone wants to make something in his honor, perhaps on Saturday as we lay him to rest.  Before we get to the recipes, though, what were some of his favorite foods?

The Holy Father certainly loved Italian food.  They say he never really enjoyed stately dinners and would just prefer to sit down at a pizzeria for a slice or two of pizza. He enjoyed an Italian dip known as bagna cauda – lots of garlic and anchovies slow cooked in olive oil with a nob or two of butter stirred in. Served with crusty bread and veggies. Not for the timid!  And his sweet tooth was well-documented, and he particularly loved dulce de leche. I’m sharing a recipe for that which is basically sweetened condensed milk in a covered pie pan baked in the oven for a good long time.  But he also had a great love for food from his native Argentina.

Yes – that’s what I want to hear about.  They say that he drank a mate every morning… that’s a type of tea, right?

Mate is a lovely drink/tea made from the yerba mate herb plant which contains caffeine, so it’s a great pick me up in the morning. You don’t boil the water for mate, just get it real hot for the best flavor and nutrition. Lots of antioxidants.

Now, he often cited empanadas as a favorite food going back to childhood.  And you have a recipe….

Empanadas are a baked turnover with savory filling. The Argentinian ones are distinctive in that they include hard boiled eggs and green olive in the filling. So the recipe I’m recommending is on the Tastes Better from Scratch.com site – it is for one that contains ground beef, herbs, spices, onions, and green olives and chopped hard boiled eggs. You can use a homemade dough or use refrigerated pie dough for the empanadas. 

Now, I gave you a research assignment ahead of our conversation today – to find out about ‘Lies.”  He wrote this in his last encyclical, Dilexit Nos:

I would repeat a story I have already told on another occasion. “For the carnival, when we were children, my grandmother would make a pastry using a very thin batter. When she dropped the strips of batter into the oil, they would expand, but then, when we bit into them, they were empty inside. In the dialect we spoke, those cookies were called ‘lies’… My grandmother explained why: ‘Like lies, they look big, but are empty inside; they are false, unreal’”.  

Rita, did you figure out what these “Lies” were?

Turns out these beloved fried strips of dough have an Italian background with lots of ways to name them depending upon how they’re rolled out. The ones Pope Francis enjoyed I believe would be very close to the recipe I’m sharing, though the ones he grew up with probably had a bit of alcohol in the recipe. The recipe I’m sharing does not – super simple! 

Italian Carnival Pastries

Made for carnival day, the Tuesday before Lent

This is not a fancy or real sweet or delicate pastry. Very good with a glass of cold milk. They puff up as they cook,  creating a somewhat hollow center – hence the “lies” analogy.  

Ingredients

1 large egg, well beaten

3/4 cup whipping cream or half & half

2 cups flour, or more as needed plus flour for rolling dough out

Oil for cooking

Powdered sugar for sprinkling on after cooking

Instructions

Pour cream into beaten egg and mix well. 
Add flour, a little at a time, until a soft dough forms, not sticky.

I used a about 2-1/4 cups flour.

Bless the dough!

On floured surface, roll dough out as thin as you can, about 1/8” is good. 

Cut into 1” strips about 3” long.

Fry in hot oil (365 degrees). It will only take a minute or so to fry the pastries. Be careful sliding them in the hot oil, and as soon as they turn golden on one side, turn them over to finish cooking.

Drain on paper towels, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.