Is Crispy Fried Dough with Sugar Universal?

[ChrisOC]

On the night before Ash Wednesday (fastnacht day or mardi gras) the German tradition is fastnachts - fried diamonds of potato dough sprinkeled with powdered sugar or sugar and cinnimon

[prasantrin]

*raises hand excitedly* I know!  I know!!  Those are called "ngao lei so", aka "cow tongue crisps", so called because of their shape.  The dough is denser that that used for "you tiew" or "you za gwai" (same thing, different name), and contains more baking soda than "you tiew".  I generally don't like "ngao lei so" because I can taste the baking soda and because it's so dense, but I like small pieces of "ngao lei so" that don't taste of baking soda.

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That sounds like them! The dough was much denser than you tiew. I never noticed the baking soda, but it has been many years since I last had one. When I'm home for the summer, I'll see if the restaurant still carries them. There was only one place in Winnipeg that had them, and I know they've been through one or two ownership changes.

It's cool to finally have a name for them! We always used to just order the "sweet doughnut" vs the "long doughnut", so we never knew what to call them.