LA CIVETTA - April 2020 | Page 54

A country rooted in Christianity, Italy's celebrations of Pasqua go above and beyond a simple Easter Egg trail around the garden. Religious parades and processions take place throughout the peninsula, in which the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is remembered. During Holy Week you'll see the Pope washing the feet of others, symbolic of Jesus' actions amongst his disciples before he was to be crucified, and a Good Friday Mass at the Vatican initiates a final procession in remembrane of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

During this period, Italian families undoubtedly celebrate the religious festivities with many traditional foods. One popular Easter dish is the torta pasqualina, a savoury quiche-like pie filled with eggs, cheese and spring vegetables. Originating in the north-western region of Liguria, torta pasqualina was made popular in Genova and is now enjoy across Italy. Dating back to the Italian Renaissance period, this dish previously had much stronger religious connotations. Made with puff pastry and seasonal spring greens, the Easter pie originally used 33 sheets of pastry to represent each year that Jesus lived before being crucifed. Nowadays the dish still indicates religious importance through the scoring of a cross on top of the pie. You'll also find that most tradiional Easter dishes along with torta pasqualina contain eggs as a symbol of new life at the time of Jesus' death and resurrection.

Here is an easy-to-follow recipe so that this popular Ligurian dish can spread further than just throughout the Italian peninsula.

TORTA

Pasqualina

INGREDIENTS

THE PASTRY:

500g puff pastry (can be bought as pastry blocks in supermarkets)

THE FILLING:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 white onion

1kg spinach, roughly cut

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground allspice

250g ricotta cheese

100g parmesan cheese

9 eggs

cucina

cucina

image: flickr