Easter, the holiest day of the year in Christendom, is celebrated with bounty and tradition.
The bounty:
To start, in the living room, we served salami, prosciutto, cheeses, Taralli and pizza rustica.
Pizza Rustica is a pie stuffed with hard boiled eggs, ricotta, provolone and mozzarella cheeses with cubed Italian cold cuts.
Taralli are unleavened dough shaped in a circle then boiled and baked.
To accompany the appetizers we served San Giuseppe Brut Prosecco Superiore 2009 vintage.
We then moved into the dining room where we enjoyed Orecchietti (pasta in the shape of little ears) with tomato sauce made with lamb shank.
The meat course was roasted leg of lamb over charcoal. The leg was bone in with slivers of garlic and rosemary imbedded in the meat marinated with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and a dusting of oregano.
The side dishes were roasted potatoes, green salad, Lampascioni and asparagus.
Lampascioni are bitter, wild, flowering bulbs from, Puglia, Italy.
We served San Giuseppe Ripasso with the pasta and meat courses.
For dessert, we served the traditional Pizza di Grano and Cassata cake.
Pizza di Grano is a pie with a filling of eggs and sprouted wheat.
Cassata is a Sicilian white cake that is filled with ricotta cream, covered with pistachio marzipan then covered with fondant and candied fruits.
We served San Giuseppe Moscato with dessert.
Tradition:
How do you say Happy Easter in Italian? Answer: Buona Pasqua, literally translated, Good Passover. Now look at the menu. Taralli, unleavened bread, roasted lamb, Lampascioni, bitter herb.
On the Christian side, the eggs and the sprouted wheat symbolize the resurrection that is Easter.
Ah! Tradition
Ah! San Giuseppe
Buona Pasqua
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