Smitten with sfineg! Discover Holy Week’s crispy dough balls (& where to get them)
These fried spheres of anchovy and dough put the fun in fasting.
While Lent is supposed to be a time of fasting and sacrifice, Malta has developed an amazingly tasty menu of items that only appears around Holy Week, making it something to look forward to, rather than dread (see also – karamelli tal-harrub, qaghaq tal-appostli, kwarezimal…you get the picture.)
Among these are anchovy sfineġ. Sfineġ are crispy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside balls of bread dough – yes, the same dough that’s used to make the famous Maltese hobza – stuffed with anchovy and deep-fried until golden.
The anchovy sfineġ first started being prepared in Rabat more than half a century ago. The idea probably travelled all the way down from Sicily – our Italian neighbours have a similar speciality called sfinci, which are more likely to be served around Christmas Eve than Good Friday.
Sfineġ are also close cousins to the traditional zeppoli, which also have Italian roots, and tend to take the islands by storm every March around the feast of St Joseph.
However, sfineġ are salty rather than sweet. And while strict vegetarians would beg to differ (after all, those anchovies were alive, once upon a time), under traditional fasting rules, they don’t contain any meat, making them perfect for people observing Catholic abstinence rules.
Making sfineġ at home is relatively easy, and with many easy to follow recipes available, plenty of people choose to go down the homemade route. After all, delicious as they are, they’re little more than deep-fried dough balls, and fairly easy to execute.
However, if you’d like to avoid having to clean up a greasy mess, prefer to support local businesses, or just believe that sfineġ sellers have that special, secret ingredient that just can’t be replicated at home, you’ll be able to buy them from a number of places at this time of year.
Where to buy sfineġ
Sfineġ are commonly found in their hometown of Rabat all year round, but especially during Holy Week, where you’ll see stalls selling them by the bagful.
Other places where one can find sfineġ include Gululu in Spinola Bay, St Julian’s, Emmanuel’s Bakery in Qormi, and at Socjeta Piroteknika Mosta and Choc Au Lait, also in Mosta. They usually don’t cost more than 50 cents a pop, so you’ll be able to load up to your heart’s content.
Do you prefer your sfineġ homemade or freshly-bought? Let us know!