Zippoli @ Zippoli, Peakhurst Foodies Markets

When I was a kid, I was treated to the most amazing Italian cooking outside of Italy you could hope to eat. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the flavours and the foods were beyond description, and I was not going to enjoy it forever. This was stuff made by my mother (and occasionally father), my grandmothers (nonnas), aunties, even uncles. My God, the food was about flavour and satisfaction, not presentation and physics that makes Masterchef a joke to me. You can keep your snowball from hell – I’ll take a good spaghetti with homemade sugo any day.

And then one day I stumbled across something. It was an ugly yellow plop of deep-fried dough. It had no definite shape, no easily describable physical appearance, no apparent redeeming feature of any kind. But, I thought, if my eyes don’t deceive me, that ugly beast looks for all the world like a sfingi, something I last had as a child. I was at the Peakhurst Foodies Markets, which happens on the last Friday evening every month at the Catholic Church in Peakhurst in southern Sydney.

This mysterious blob I was looking at was called a zippoli – an Italian doughnut – and was made by a company called… wait for it… Zippoli.

A zippoli is another name for sfingi – it just depends on whereabouts in Italy you come from.

Naturally, I bought one, and the price was extremely reasonable.

I was not disappointed whatsoever. The flavour and the texture took me back decades to my youth, where a sfingi was a treat. And now it seemed more so than ever, not only because I was enjoying a rare doughnut, but because more of the world could enjoy one of those magnificent flavours I had as a child.

My kids were instantly wrapped. And now their friends are in on it. Spread the news – zippoli, sfingi, Italian doughnut, ugly blob, whatever you want to call it, can be bought freshly made at Peakhurst, once a month.

Once again, wog food rocks.

Zippoli, Peakhurst Foodies Market, last Friday of every month

Zippoli