Gnocchi Fritti

Ida Lancellotti has fried mountains of these airy crisp fritters in her lifetime. When she and her husband took over his family’s osteria in Soliera outside Modena in 1976, she routinely made as many as 500 at a time and served them for breakfast with a quartered onion, crispy pork cracklings, sliced prosciutto and salame, chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and lots of Lambrusco wine.

Men came by for a little pick-me-up around 7:30 a.m., after two or three hours