Torta Pasqualina - an Easter tradition

4 days ago
6 min read

"The quintessential spring dish." Stefano Arturi

I have now been trawling the net for examples of this Italian - no - Ligurian - Easter dish - a pie filled with cheese and greens and eggs. I now have a large number of examples and a few things to say about it but didn't know which example to use as my header picture - so in the end I decided to go for the very first one I looked at from a website called Marcella in Cucina - after all, she's Italian and it looks pretty good. I can't quite remember the niceties of her recipe now, but it is a useful summary picture I think - as you will discover.

This particular dish has been listed in my Ideas list for some time but I deliberately decided to save it for Easter. However, Easter has come and gone, so I'm a bit late. Like our own family Easter get together, which had to be postponed until tomorrow, so I therefore thought being late with this one would be OK

As you can see it's a sort of picnic dish, and I discovered in our Italian class last week that all of the Italians - well lots of them - go off on a picnic on Easter Monday, so maybe this is in lots of those picnic baskets. It's certainly not meant to be hot straight from the oven - although warm seems to be the recommendation.

"After baking, torta pasqualina is left to rest for a few hours and it is then eaten at room temperature, never hot." Stefano Arturi

So where to begin? Well perhaps with the tradition and the history. First written down it seems by a cook called Bartolomeo Scappi in 1570 in Genoa - the capital of Liguria which lays claim to it. The other main thing to note about it from this point of view is that there were supposed to be 33 layers of paper thin pastry - top and bottom - to symbolise the 33 years of Christ's life.

Which brings me indeed to the part of the dish over which there is most argument. And, of which Felicity Cloake says:

"Though it’s called a torta, this is, in fact, a pie – and, as such, open to the usual pastry-based compromises that always suggest that making the stuff is far more difficult than it actually is"

Now Felicity always tries to adhere to tradition with her 'perfect' recipes, but she is also practical. For this recipe she follows tradition in that she makes the right pastry, but not 33 layers of it. I think she went for six, and she didn't find it all that difficult:

"Though it’s called a torta, this is, in fact, a pie – and, as such, open to the usual pastry-based compromises that always suggest that making the stuff is far more difficult than it actually is." Felicity Cloake

She went for six at the behest of an Italian chef called Stefano Arturi whose article on the subject of Torta Pasquala is probably the most comprehensive. He followed the method of an old lady called Enrichetta Trucco considered to be the expert on LIgurian traditions - her version on the left and his on the right. The pastry is similar to filo in that it is often simply just flour water and salt, but sometimes with some oil - rolled out very, very, thin and then draped into the pie tin so that it overhangs and then is folded over the top.

But, of course, others try other things - filo, flaky pastry, even shortcrust rolled thin, and, of course, for us lazy people - shop-bought puff pastry - as does Ottolenghi (his version shown here - well he is half Italian). Of which the 'expert' Stefano Arturi says:

"I draw the line to the use of puff pastry, as seen in many versions: this would be untraditional, inauthentic and plain wrong in my book."

I imagine a lot of Italians actually buy the whole thing ready made - whether from an artisan baker or the supermarket.

Rachel Roddy - The Guardian's Italian expert - apparently went for a softer kind of pastry which was made with butter and ricotta and was found by Felicity Cloake to be "too soft and rich here", although Rachel tells us that it's Marcella Hazan's choice of pastry, and I'm pretty sure that many would consider Marcella Hazan to be the authority on all things Italian. But then again she's probably not Ligurian and so it doesn't count.

The arguments don't stop there however. Of course.

Next comes the construction. Traditionally it seems to be pastry, a layer of greens, a layer of cheese some raw eggs, topped with more layers of cheese and greens. And even here there are arguments about where the eggs should be - at the bottom, the middle or the top? Sylvia Colloca - Italian but from Abruzzo - doesn't even cover the pie with pastry - just a lattice work, and breaks the eggs on top.

Let's, deal with the eggs first. Our Ligurian old lady seemed to say that the eggs were not mandatory and Stefano Arturi doesn't put them in - but really, we discover, because he doesn't like them. Fair enough you might say but Eataly - an Italian food company tells us (their version shown here) that:

"The most important aspect of torta pasqualina is the eggs baked inside. When you cut the pie, you should see the egg sliced through the middle in what’s a beautiful and festive effect."

And somebody else said (apologies I can't remember who now):

"Each region has an Easter dish, specialty pies and the usual daily breads, but enriched, containing or encasing eggs – the ultimate symbol of hope, renewal and fertility; new life contained in a delicate shell."

Indeed - what is Easter without eggs?

There's not a lot to say about the cheese other than that it really should be a cheese called prescinsêua which is a bit like ricotta and virtually unobtainable outside Liguria, and so everyone goes for ricotta. But even then, some of it mix it with yoghurt, some of it with cream, or crème fraïche. I think a few didn't even include cheese at all but mixed their greens with one of those other creamy things - no separate layers of greens and cheese.

The greens are supposed to be silver beet - easily found here but not in the UK. So lots of people substitute spinach. A, to me, ulikely alternative is artichokes and baby ones at that, which are of course in season, in spring (let us not forget that Easter is a springtime festival) but not readily available unless you grow your own. Felicity has a go:

"I decide to have a go with baby artichokes, which actually are more forgiving to prep than their full-sized elders, but they are so rare in the UK that it seems a shame to hide them in a pie, nice as the results are. I would suggest using tinned artichoke hearts instead, but I’m too scared of Italians."

Ottolenghi was good about the silver beet but 'sinned' by including celery as well as the onions that many use to mix in with the greens. And I saw a few recipes that used greens such as nettles and dandelions - even bergamot, which as Felicity said is pretty hard to come by. Also, somewhat curiously to me, said that marjoram - an almost obligatory herbal addition - is also hard to find in the UK. She also said she found some, added it, and then couldn't taste it anyway, so why bother?

A last few examples: Torta Pasqualina - La Cucina Italiana; one from Tara's Multicultural Table which may be based on a recipe from The Silver Spoon and one from Belinda So/Gourmet Traveller which dared to take a different form - and mixed the cgeese with the greens I see.

In my Ideas list I had bracketed Torta Pasqualina with Pizza rustica which Rachel Roddy whose version is shown below on the left describes as "an english breakfast sealed in pastry" although you can't see much of the bacon in her version. The Eataly version has more of the cured meats. They tell us that this comes from the south - Campania - and: that

"Pizza Rustica is typically characterized by a thick, flaky crust filled with a delicious mix of cheeses such as mozzarella and ricotta and cured meats like salami, mortadella and prosciutto."

There seems to be some greenery in there too. Still, other regional versions of the same idea I guess.

And over there in the UK the British do indeed have 'breakfast in a pie' in the form of Bacon and egg pie - which I vaguely remember from my youth, although not made at home. Bought in a shop. These are everyday things however and not associated particularly with Easter. Below two examples: English bacon and egg pie - Paul Hollywood/SBS; Egg and bacon pie - Hairy Bikers/Jack Deen, and both, I have to say look pretty yummy.