Sunday Extra #3: A Menu for Easter...or Spring!

Savory cheese pastries, a traditional lamb stew, and my latest crostata recipe

Apr 02, 2023

∙ Paid

First: Hello, new subscribers! I’m not exactly sure how you’ve found me (Substack recommendations? Instagram?) but I’m glad you’re here. Please spend some time clicking through the archives, where you’ll find more than a year’s worth of recipes.

Welcome to the third issue of Buona Domenica Sunday Extra. This is a monthly feature in which I delve a little deeper into Italian cooking. One of my aims is to take a closer look at traditional Italian dishes and to put them in context. This is also an opportunity to share more involved recipes, occasional seasonal menus, and more. As I mentioned in my first newsletter of this year, I’m putting few limits on this feature; I just want to see where it takes us. Today it is taking us once more to Abruzzo, for a typical Easter feast.

The Sunday Extra is a premium series, with the newsletter portion available to all subscribers, and new recipes behind the paywall. If you’d like, you can upgrade your subscription to access the full newsletter, as well as all Buona Domenica recipes and archives, located here.

My ace illustrator, Daniela, and I will be off next week for Easter break and back to our regularly scheduled free Sunday newsletter on April 16.

Buona Pasqua to all who celebrate, and happy Sunday to everyone!

My sister, Maria, and I were texting back and forth the other day trying to remember what our mom used to make for Easter dinner. Weirdly, we can only remember the baked goods she turned out faithfully, year after year:

Pizza rustica: her savory torte stuffed with a generous mix of cheeses and cured meats. It was (and remains) our Easter dinner appetizer.
Ricotta cake: which at some point was replaced by Pastiera, a similar Neapolitan torte made with ricotta and wheat berries. Our mom loved it, but it was not my favorite, sorry to say!
La Treccia: a sweet braid of anise-scented bread, decorated with colored eggs. Alas, I’ve not been able to find her recipe, and none of the other sweet Easter braid recipes I’ve tried have come close.
Giant sugar cookies: A large single bunny-shaped sugar cookie (one for each of us) made from a waxed paper pattern that our mom had cut out (I still have it, folded up, in her recipe box). She baked the cookies, we got to decorate them. I think the bunnies were her Americanized version of La Pupa e il Cavallo, which are traditional Abruzzese Easter cookies. One (la pupa) is shaped like a girl and was given to girls; the other (il cavallo) is shaped like a horse and was given to boys. I’m still working on a recipe for this. Maybe next year…

As for the meal itself, our memories are distressingly vague, unlike our memories of Christmas or Thanksgiving. Was it roast lamb? Our dad’s filet mignon (so good that I put the recipe in Big Night In)? Mom’s lasagne alla Bolognese (a recipe I’ve shared many times over, including in Big Night In)?

There was a period when I was a teenager when we reconnected with mom’s Zio Eliseo—which is to say her mom’s brother and my great uncle. Zio Eliseo owned a barber shop on Arthur Avenue, in the Bronx, for many years but was retired and a widower by the time we got acquainted. He was quite a character, a short slim fellow with a pencil mustache and pomade in his hair and a gruff voice (he smoked a lot). He liked to wear Tabu Cologne, and not just a little. Here’s a photo from his Arthur Avenue days. Zio Eliseo is on the right. I don’t know the identities of the other two gents, or who took the picture, but it is one of my absolute favorites from my family collection.

Every year, from the time we reconnected until Zio Elieo’s death, our dad would drive the two hours up to the Bronx and bring him home for Easter weekend. Eliseo was an accomplished cook, and although our mom in those days preferred to do most of the cooking herself, she always yielded to him on Easter and let him make his roast lamb. He would stud it liberally with garlic and rosemary and tie it up neatly. There’s a recipe (again in BNI) in which I riff on Eliso’s roast lamb with a grilled version.

He passed when I was in my early 20s, and Easter dinner went back to being the fuzziest of the three big food holidays. And it’s more or less remained so. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you what I myself cooked last Easter, probably because neither of our kids was home. It’s possible my husband and I grilled arrosticini (lamb skewers). We may have gone out. As I wrote last year, my most memorable Easter was the one in which the four of us sat on some stone steps in Portofino and ate focaccia.

There is an upside to not having a set menu that you feel obligated to return to year after year: you have the freedom to create one. While the menu I’ve devised for this Easter is new to me, it is, not surprisingly, rooted in Abruzzese tradition. Yes, it features eggs + sheep’s milk cheese (see last week’s newsletter) both in the appetizer and in the main dish. Those of you who took last spring’s Apericena class will be familiar with the appetizer, fiadoni, which are small, savory pastries sort of like little hand pies, filled with a mix of cheeses. The main dish is a traditional Easter lamb stew called Agnello Casce e Ove, or agnello cacio e uova—lamb with cheese and eggs (I solemnly promise no eggs or cheese in my next newsletter).

Unless you’re from Abruzzo or neaby Campania, where Naples is located, you’re probably unfamiliar with this particular, and somewhat peculiar preparation, in which the meat is cooked slowly and gently in wine and then finished with a rich sauce made from beaten eggs and cheese brightened by a squeeze of lemon juice. If it sounds odd, it did to me, too; it’s a dish my mom never made, in spite of her being from Abruzzo. I had bookmarked the recipe in an old Abruzzese cookbook years ago, and I’m so glad I finally gave it a go. The lamb is fork-tender, and deliciously blanketed with the tangy sauce. It’s a welcome change from traditional roast lamb.

The full menu and some other options are listed below. The recipes for the Fiadoni and the Agnello Casce e Ove are previously unpublished, so they are behind the paywall.

As for dessert, it might be the course I’m most excited about; it’s a new crostata that I made for the first time last week and that I am completely in love with: Crostata alla Stracciatella. That recipe will be going out to paid subscribers on Tuesday.

EASTER MENU, 2023

ANTIPASTI

FIADONI ABRUZZESI: These savory cheese-filled pastries get their name for the way they puff up during baking (“fiato” means breath) and the way some of the cheesy filling spills out of a little hole cut into their tops. Fiadoni are traditionally served at Easter time in Abruzzo, but they make a great aperitivo anytime, and can be made in advance. (Recipe below)

GABRIELLA’S PIZZA RUSTICA: It’s not Easter without my mom’s pizza rustica.

GIARDINIERA-STUFFED EGGS: a longtime favorite!

PRIMO PIATTO (optional)

HOMEMADE CHEESE RAVIOLI with tomato sauce: a classic in Abruzzese cuisine that you will find in almost any restaurant. Bonus: these can be made in advance and frozen until you want to cook them.

SECONDO (ENTRÉE)

AGNELLO CASCE E OVE, with roast potatoes on the side. The lamb stew recipe is below. Use your favorite recipe for roast potatoes—my favorite one is in Big Night In.

CONTORNO

PEAS WITH SHALLOTS AND PANCETTA: I adore peas and I don’t mind saying that I like frozen peas just as much as fresh, so that’s what I use in this recipe, as it’s a little early for fresh farmers’ market peas here in Virginia.

DOLCE

CROSTATA ALLA STRACCIATELLA: If you love stracciatella gelato, you will surely love this riff that I came up with for Easter. It’s not a random choice; there is a connection between Easter and stracciatella. Details and the recipe are coming Tuesday to paid subscribers.

Two more crostata recipes—STRAWBERRIES & CREAM CROSTATA and LEMON CROSTATA—can both be found here.

Readers: Do you have a traditional Easter menu or a favorite spring dish you look forward to every year? Tell us about it in the comments.

Buona Domenica