Spring & Easter

Spring break senior year, two months before I graduate from NYU is not exactly a vacation even though I went to London to visit my Dad.  It’s more like preparation for my final senior project, a focused study amalgamating EVERYTHING I’ve learned up ‘til now, split up by small breaks of art, shopping, and of course, food.  Basically, stress oozed out of every pore the entire ten days.  I tried doing yoga; I tried going for runs; I tried a few breathing exercises, and sure, all of that helped, but there’s really only one thing that hit the spot: chain restaurants.

Easter isn't complete without eggs, be it chocolate eggs, plastic eggs, or desserts made with eggs. Eggs are popular around Easter time, not just because it's what the Easter bunny delivers, but also because of it's religious symbolism. The sunny yolks just look so vivid, that they alone can fill the holiday with the promise of new beginnings. Braided breads and yellow cakes made with eggs are traditional but for something even sunnier and sweeter, these lemon bars really make a beautiful dessert for Easter.

I've had many good and bad lemon bars, but the best I've ever had were at Baked Bakery in Brooklyn. About five years ago, I made my first pilgrimage to this exceptional bakery. I still remember my first taste of the lemon-lime bars I had that day. I never forgot them and knew immediately one day I would try making them myself. When Baked came out with their first book, I was overjoyed to have the recipe. Here I adapt it to use Meyer lemons, which lend more sweetness and flavor than regular lemons.

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.

My mother thought organized religion was one of the problems with the world, this extended to the Girl Scouts and the PTA (a somewhat convenient belief for a mother of 4, since you can’t ask someone to go against their beliefs).  She also believed that children shouldn’t be allowed to act.

I have never quite understood how I talked her into letting me enter the Beverly Hills’ Miss Easter Bunny pageant when I was 8 – one of the prizes was a screen-test – but I did.     

I don’t know what I was thinking.  I think I thought it would be fun to ride down Beverly Drive in an old white cadillac with the top down sitting next to the Mayor of Beverly Hills and wave at the throngs of people I imagined would be lining the streets.  I think I thought I was going to win. 

Little did I know, the fix was in.