THE PIE ROAD

Pie consumption in Liguria could rival that in the north of England, writes JOHN IRVING, and its torta pasqualina comes with a side of Biblical significance.

Torta pasqualina is the bold Ligurian answer to the pie, writes John Irving.

Not everyone comes to Italy and falls in love with the country’s much-vaunted regional cuisine. Take my sister Mary, who’s been visiting every summer for the past 10 years or so. On her first trip, I thought I’d impress her by taking her down to Tuscany for a week. History, art, breathtaking landscapes, great food and wine – it’s the region that encapsulates the tourist’s Italian dream, or so they say.

We were speeding along Autostrada A12 on the way home to Piedmont when she confessed. Sure, she’d enjoyed the ribollita, the pappardelle, the wild boar stew, the Chianti, but something was missing. After scoffing some of the finest dishes Tuscany has to offer, she was craving something else. She was pining for a pie.

She lives in Newcastle in the north of England, pie land par excellence. Be it pork or game, steak and kidney or meat and potato, or even shepherd’s or fish, which don’t have pastry at all, the pie is the soul food of the north, and it’s eaten not every day, but almost – at least at my sister’s house.

The Tuscan pie fast had been too much for her. How would she make it through the rest of the holiday without one? I could read her mind. “Pity you don’t have pies in Italy,” she was thinking. “I’ll show you,” I was thinking.

It was a Saturday, it was midday and we were entering

Liguria. An hour later, we were sitting down for lunch at a hilltop restaurant – La Brinca in the inland village of Ne near Genoa, run by a mate of mine, Sergio Circella. Sergio specialises in traditional Ligurian fare, so I was pretty sure he’d have one torta salata – savoury pie – or another on the menu. And he did.

The fact is that Liguria, from Ventimiglia in the west to La Spezia in the east, is no less a region of pie-eaters than the north of England. Hemmed in between the sea and the mountains, with little fertile land to cultivate, it has always made a virtue of necessity, making the most of garden vegetables and aromatic herbs. One ingredient it has in abundance, though, is olives, hence oil, which it once exported in return for grain, hence flour. Necessity is also the mother of invention, and the exchange gave rise to a rich array of focacce and, yes, pies.

Liguria, of course, was also a region of seafarers – Christopher Columbus, first and foremost – and all this relatively nonperishable proto finger-food proved ideal tucker for long voyages. No other Italian regional food has less need of cutlery.

Unlike the French quiche or Spanish empanada, which generally contain meat or cheese in some shape or form, the Ligurian torta is filled with chard, spinach, artichokes, pumpkin,

“Pity you don’t have pies here in Italy ,” she was thinking. “I’ll show you,” I was thinking.

zucchini, onions and the like. Which is why some versions are also referred to as torta verde, “green pie”.

Sure enough, on that day at Circella’s restaurant, my sister was served a slice of pie, more specifically a version known as baciocca, filled with potatoes and onion, and her withdrawal symptoms disappeared at the first bite. It was the middle of August, but had it been earlier in the year, she would likely have been served torta pasqualina – Easter pie, a specialty of Genoa made with layers of puff pastry, filled with a mixture of chard and ricotta encasing whole eggs.

In culinary terms, the torta pasqualina was a celebration of spring. That was when chard was in season, with peasants bringing it into the city by the cartload. Eggs were also seasonal; in those days before battery farming, broody hens used to concentrate their egg-laying into the early springtime. The filling ingredients were bound by prescinsêua, a soft-curd cheese that is hard to find nowadays and habitually replaced by ricotta.

The tradition of the torta pasqualina is packed with religious symbolism. In 1865, food historian Emanuele Rossi wrote that the pie should contain 33 layers of pastry to denote the years of the life of Christ, which must have put the culinary skills of Genoese housewives to the test. If they were around today, you would back these women to win one of those TV bake-offs hands down. Eggs have always been a symbol of fertility and renewal. Modern recipes generally require only a few, but many historical sources call for 12 to symbolise Christ’s disciples. Others say seven, supposedly to represent the points on the pagan solar wheel.

The wafer-thin pastry layers in the torta pasqualina are fillo-like and delicate, the chard has a nice chewy texture, the ricotta enriches the flavour, the eggs add substance. In spring, Ligurians eat the pie warm with lattuga ripiena, lettuce stuffed with meat and cheese, and roast shank of lamb or kid to go along with it.

But in my opinion, it really comes into its own when eaten cold the day after baking. And if you accompany it with a glass of Ligurian wine – a red rossese or a white pigato – it’s better still.