GLOBAL FEAST FOR EASTER
Recipes, traditions from around the world served in Pittsburgh homes
Western Pennsylvania is a melting pot of culinary traditions and no more so than during the holidays, when the dishes your mother and grandmother grew up with are the stars of the dinner table.
For many Pittsburghers, including myself, it wouldn’t be Easter without a honey-glazed ham on the buffet, along with a big creamy bowl of scalloped potatoes, fresh spring peas swimming in melted butter, and a platter of mustardy deviled eggs. This all-American meal pays homage to the 1950s through dessert, where the tried-and-true favorites include coconut cream pie for the adults, and a chiffon-like lime Jell-O salad — sweetened in all its jiggly glory with crushed pineapple and shredded carrot — for the kids and coconut-haters.
My neighbor Josephine Coletti, who was raised in a small village near L’Aquila in central Italy’s Abruzzo region, has a different tradition. For her, as for many of the
Italian born or Italian-Americans living in Pittsburgh's “Little Italy” neighborhood of Bloomfield, Easter means pasta with some sort of lamb sauce, along with sweet Easter breads, dried meats and a bounty of asparagus.
Farmers have raised sheep for centuries in Abruzzo’s Apennine Mountains, and the region is famous for its hearty signature lamb ragu. Lamb and sheep are also a key source of Abruzzese cheese, including pecorino-Romano, a hard, salty cheese that’s perfect for grating onto pasta.
As a child, Mrs. Coletti says, Easter morning unfolded with various types of frittata, especially with ricotta and asparagus, which grows wild in Abruzzo’s shady corners. The family enjoyed cured meats such as salami and soppressata, and “eggs, eggs and more eggs,” she says, including the brightly colored hard-boiled ones that children would use to play bocce.
The frittata and dried, salty meats were paired with sweet breads with tinted hard-boiled eggs baked into the dough and a whimsical dove-shaped bread known as calomba di Pasqua. “When I was young, the baked sweet breads would be taken to church in a basket on Holy Friday or Saturday to be blessed by the priest,” she recalls.
Dessert, she adds, was always a delightful exercise in decadence: a “Pizza Pan di Spagna,” which is a sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, flour and lemon rind for flavors, and moistened with liquor and filled with cream. Mangia!
Eastern Europeans like their breads sweet on Easter, too, most famously golden-brown loaves of paska. Rich with butter and eggs, it’s often braided along the edges or marked with a cross design. (The name paska comes from the Hebrew word for Passover and signifies peace, salvation and happiness.) The yellow crust is said to represent the resurrection of Jesus while the white represents the Holy Spirit. The Easter holiday also is celebrated with hard-cooked and decorated eggs, egg-cheeses (similar to cottage cheese but made from milk and eggs), ham, kielbasa, baked veal, cuts of lamb and pork roast served with fresh horseradish and beets — all of which has been loaded into baskets, covered with an embroidered cloth and taken to church on Holy Saturday for the Easter blessing.
For those with German ancestry, which accounts for a lot of Pittsburghers (Germans are the largest ethnic groups in the city), dinner on Maundy Thursday might start with a warm and creamy bowl of Grundonnerstagzuppe (Green Thursday Soup). A celebration of fresh spring herbs, this delicate soup often contains bitter greens such as dandelion or sorrel as a sign of penitence; the name derives from the ancient German word greinen, meaning to cry or moan.
In Poland, Easter is an even bigger deal than Christmas, writes Zuza Zak in “Polsak: New Polish Cooking.” “The Easter feast is always a cold buffet of zakaski (hot and cold hors d’oeuvres), as guests come and go all day long, with warm dishes being served at intervals,” she writes. One example is a simple souffle-like babka lightly perfumed with cumin and served on a sea of marinated red peppers.
And in Mexico, one of the most beloved desserts during Lent and on Easter is a sugary bread pudding made from chunks of stale bread called capirotada. Originally served in the 15th century as a sopa seca, or dry soup, at the start of a meal, it pleases the palate with a lush combination of syrup-soaked bread topped with fresh cheese and toasted nuts, and studded with wine-soaked raisins. Like the sweet Easter breads baked throughout Europe, it’s rich with meaning. The bread represents the body of Christ; the dark syrup made from red wine and piloncillo (unrefined whole cane sugar) symbolizes his blood; and the cinnamon sticks and whole cloves used to flavor the syrup represent the wood of the cross and the nails used to crucify him.
A solemn dish, to be sure, but also one that leaves diners feeling upbeat from the delicious sugar rush.