Spring & Easter

When I think of Easter, I think of pies. Not chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps, or colorful Easter eggs, but delicious Italian pies, especially ricotta.

Growing up, my mom always prepared a traditional and labor intensive Easter dinner. In truth, she could have skipped the whole thing and just served her pies. In the week before Easter Sunday, our house became a dairy. The shelves in the second refrigerator in our basement sagged from countless dozens of eggs, pints of cream, pounds of butter, and tubs of ricotta cheese needed for our pie production.

Although it can be made year-round, ricotta pie (torta di ricotta) is an Italian cheesecake that is especially associated with Easter. There are many regional recipes for ricotta pie, some savory and some sweet. Savory versions usually include meats and additional cheeses, while sweet pies are typically flavored with citrus, nuts, and chocolate.

When I called my mom for her recipe last week, I learned that it was Nan's and that it had a storied past. "Nan was the first person in the family to use pineapple instead of citron in her ricotta pie. And boy were her sisters jealous!” I had no idea Nan was a baking maverick.

I realized today that I haven’t given a lick of thought to what we’ll have for Easter dinner—nor have I set aside time to develop a new Easter side dish to post for you all on the blog. My apologies. But just so I don’t leave you high and dry, I thought I’d offer you a piece of advice about everyone’s favorite Easter vegetable, asparagus: If you’re cooking for a crowd, keep it simple and pick a method like grilling or roasting.

While I’ve already posted about three methods I love for cooking asparagus (stir-frying, sautéing, and quick-braising), unfortunately these methods are best for serving three or four people. (And Easter dinner usually means at least a few more seats at the table.) Once you start overcrowding the sauté or stir-fry pan, you risk overcooking asparagus (steaming it before it browns). I also find poaching and boiling large amounts of asparagus to be risky, too (tips get overcooked or stem ends get undercooked).

What I love about grilling and roasting is that you can cook lots of asparagus at once. The big broad expanse of a gas grill’s grate or the generous surface area of a large sheet pan can accommodate twice as many asparagus as a sauté pan. Also, if you’re cooking a big ol’ leg of lamb and maybe some mashed potatoes, suddenly a quick and simple side dish becomes very appealing.

In a true southern kitchen, Coca-Cola is not only found in the refrigerator, it's also found in the pantry. You are more likely to find a few cans of Coke stashed with the flour and sugar than you are to find a bottle of balsamic vinegar. We marinate ham with it, make barbeque sauce out of it, add it to baked beans and even bake cakes with it.

I have been convinced for years that someday I will be discovered by a Coke executive in a hotel at 5 am, as I am standing by a Coke machine in my pajamas, or what I refer to as my 'almost pajamas,' a line of clothing I am going to design someday for those of us who start our day wandering around the halls searching for a Coke machine. It would be a perfect commercial.

I am not a fan of cake. I like chocolate cake but prefer to eat the chocolate that goes into the cake as the flour and butter do nothing but dilute the chocolate. Why waste the calories on the other ingredients when you can instead, just eat more chocolate?

My mother is a terrific cook, but she never made cakes. She would buy those dry, tasteless cakes with the icky icing from the grocery store and put some candles on it and that would be my birthday cake. When I got older she found an elderly lady who lived next door to my grandmother who makes a pretty good chocolate cake even though I was never too thrilled about it.

I finally got the urge to bake bread for the first time yesterday. I decided to make a traditional Hungarian kalács that my mother and her mother before her used to make for Easter. It can be made for any holiday, but it has the most symbolism on Easter particularly because it's made with eggs. But also if the dough is formed into a wreath it mimics Jesus' crown of thorns.

It can also be placed in a loaf pan if you like the Wonder-bread look. Traditionally kalács is made with milk and butter to create its brioche-like texture and is braided with three or four strands. The bread looks a lot like a Jewish challah bread too, and technically this recipe is perfect for making challah bread, but to keep it kosher simply replace the milk with water and the butter with margarine.