Book of Days

And so the Finns had St. Urho’s Day this past week and the Irish had St. Patrick’s Day. But today it is St. Joseph’s Day, and here we come to a very important day to my people. For us Italians, the feast of San Giuseppe centers around food (imagine that?!) and in particular one pastry: zeppole. Any good Italian bakery worth its salt (or perhaps sugar) will be selling these pastries, which traditionally make their appearance only at this time of year, today. In the more popular bakeries, you might find rolling racks full of trays of them behind the counter; they’ll be making so many of them, they won’t possibly fit them all inside the display case.

Zeppole are pastries of fried dough, generous in size, each typically something you could fit into two open hands. They are filled with custard and often include a few cherries on top. There are also sfinci, related to zeppole, but filled with sweetened ricotta cream, perhaps with a few small chocolate chips, very much like a cannoli filling. Variations of these sweets, in name and in shape and ingredients, exist throughout Italy for the feast of San Giuseppe, but it is in the South, from where my family hails, that they are best known. Both sfinci and zeppole are pastries with histories that go back many centuries, with names that come out of the Arabic influence on the region. How far back do they go? The ancient Romans made fried pastries each year on the 17th of March in honor of Bacchus, and it is thought that the zeppole and sfinci we make today are direct descendants of those long ago sweets of springtime.

It may be Lent, but St. Joseph’s Day provides a day to step away from that otherwise somber restraint to enjoy rich and festive pastries. Even the Church offers a special dispensation to allow for corned beef and cabbage when St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday, so I am here granting you dispensation allowing you to have a zeppole for San Giuseppe, even if you have given up sweets for Lent. It is, after all, but one day a year. For my people, these pastries are perhaps the highlight of March. You have an entire nation behind you.

As for Seth and me, we will be heading to Joseph’s Market in nearby Palm Beach Gardens. It will, most likely, be absolutely crazy there today, but that’s part of the appeal. We Italians are quite fond of name days, and on the Feast of San Giuseppe, everyone named Joseph or Joe or Josephine or any variant thereof celebrates his or her name day. Even Joseph’s Market. If it’s anything like last year, the aroma of sausages and peppers will be wafting through the store, and there will be someone belting out Neopolitan songs to live musical accompaniment, and maybe a few Frank Sinatra songs and Dean Martin songs for good measure, and people will carry on conversations at times from one end of a store aisle to another, for this is how my people communicate best, by shouting, even if we are just asking how much something costs or paying someone a compliment. And if we are not shouting, we will talk and gesture. Even I––a quiet man who does not carry on conversations across spaces greater than three or four feet––cannot seem to help from gesturing. The hands speak louder than the tongue sometimes. Imagine, a small store filled with hundreds of these people. And the great bulk of them at the bakery counter, ordering zeppole by the dozen. It is the polar opposite of visiting the Finnish bakery for cardamom-scented pulla on St. Urho’s Day.

But these are my people and I love them and the zeppole of San Giuseppe are what make March worthwhile. March, the month that Garrison Keillor once described as “the month God created to show people who do not drink what a hangover feels like.” A good zeppole can make your March worthwhile.

Images: Zeppole and sfinci, above. The zeppole are more popular; the sfinci at this bakery are identified by green candied cherries. Top: “Stasera Zeppole” translates to “Tonight Zeppole.” The photograph of a baker’s storefront window was taken by Giovanni Dall’Orto in Syracuse, Sicily.