Breaking the Fast for Easter

Breakfast in Italy is usually a sparse affair. A cup of milk and coffee with a few cookies. A cup of cappuccino and a pastry. For children, milk and cookies or pastry. Instead of the cookies or pastry, maybe a slice of bread with marmalade.

But Easter breakfast, the first meal after the forty-day austerity of Lent, is a grand occasion. With much to-ing and fro-ing, people gather in the ingredients for the feast in the days beforehand. Eggs, not a traditional breakfast food in Italy, top everybody's list. As a symbol of rebirth, hard-boiled eggs are a part of the Easter feast.

In the meantime, the parish priest visits during Lent to bless the house. It’s quite a regimented operation in my neighborhood. The building doorkeeper canvases the residents to learn who wants their apartments blessed and reports to the church. Then a date is announced, and someone is expected to be home to receive the priest. If he comes during the week before Easter, the family will have boiled eggs—one for each family member—available for blessing.

The priest came to my building a couple of weeks ago, so the faithful will carry a basket of hard-boiled eggs to church a day or two before to be blessed for the Easter breakfast. On a television show recently, I saw a chef talking about Easter breakfast. His basket held some eggs marked with a black cross while others were plain. He explained that cross identified the blessed eggs so that if people wanted more than one egg, they could make sure to reserve a blessed one for each family member. Traditionally, children color eggs on the Saturday before Easter, but not, I think, the blessed ones.

A second requirement for Easter breakfast is salami, specifically one called corallina from Umbria. This sausage is made with ground pork shoulder and ham and studded with cubes of pork fat. It flavored with salt, pepper, and garlic steeped in wine. Stuffed into natural casings, the corallina is smoked with juniper berries and then aged for three to five months.

The corallina is accompanied by pizza della Pasqua (Easter pizza) which is a yeast bread made with cheese—usually goat cheese—and eggs. The dough is sprinkled with grindings of black pepper. I especially love pizza della Pasqua and always look forward to finding it in shops before Easter. Though not an Italian tradition, it's wonderful toasted and slathered with butter; I may be the only person in Italy who eats it that way.

Depending on the number of people, there may be other cold cuts and cheese. There can also be fritatta, and even a lamb dish cooked with artichokes, but some people think that’s too heavy for the morning, especially since lamb will probably be on the lunch menu. Easter breakfast is often accompanied by red wine.

Next comes the Colomba, a sweet bread baked in the shape of a dove, the symbol of peace. The dough for this bread often incorporates candied fruits, especially orange and lemon peel. It’s covered with a crunchy, sugary topping studded with whole almonds. Some people may also serve fresh ricotta—especially made with goat’s milk—with honey.

When everybody is sated, cups of espresso are poured and the big chocolate egg comes out. After it’s been smashed and the surprise discovered (see my post from last year), adults and children alike nibble on the chocolate. And perhaps Mamma melts some of the chocolate egg with boiling water to make a beverage for the kiddies.

Buona Pasqua a tutti! Happy Easter everyone!

Brown Eggs Are Better When They're Chocolate

Chocolate Easter eggs are clogging the supermarket aisles in Italy these days. And the pastry shops and chocolate confectioners are overflowing with handmade treasures. These chocolate eggs are an old tradition here. Each hollow egg contains a surprise, and finding the surprise is half the fun.

The smallest eggs are about 10 inches high, made from about 500 grams of chocolate. The eggs can be as large as five kilos, which is a hefty amount of chocolate indeed.

Each egg is balanced on a little plastic cup to make it stand up straight. Then it’s placed on a square of colorful foil which is gathered up around the egg and fastened in a topknot, often with a ribbon.

The supermarket variety targets children. The foil wrapper hints to the prize inside, and children have their favorites. A quick stroll through my neighborhood supermarket revealed eggs featuring many cartoon character—T om and Jerry to Scooby Doo to the Roadrunner (known here as Willy Coyote and Beep Beep). Disney is well represented, too, with 1001 Dalmatians, Snow White and Peter Pan.

Some eggs contain prizes that are targeted for girls, others for boys. The eggs for girls are labeled “Bimba” in large letters while those for boys say “Bimbo.” This is diminutive for the word bambino, child, with the characteristic “a” ending for feminine words and “o” for masculine. It always makes me giggle since “bimbo” in American English usually means a ditzy female. I’m longing to call a male American friend Bimbo. But I digress.

Commercial eggs targeting adults use other ploys. Perugina, the manufacturer of Baci candies, makes an egg featuring the dark chocolate of their kisses; the prize inside these eggs is four Baci. Lindt, from neighboring Switzerland, gets in the act, too. Their elegant eggs are wrapped in red foil and topped with gold ribbon.

And the choices! One company produces a candy bar called Novi made from chocolate embedded with hazelnuts. Their egg is called “Noccciolato,” combining the Italian word nocciola (hazelnut) and cioccolato (chocolate). It’s the only egg I’ve seen that’s bumpy.
People stand in the aisles discussing the merits of milk chocolate vs. dark. They’re both available, but you have to read the label carefully.

The pastry shops and chocolate confectioners make the eggs by hand with elaborate decorations. The prizes inside these eggs tend to be more elegant, too. These shops are prepared to make eggs to order. You see chocolate egg halves awaiting a customer’s special prize. Engagement rings are frequently tucked into these.

The customary way to open a chocolate egg to get at the prize is to punch it with your fist. It seems crass, but that’s the custom. And you do get a little bit of joy at feeling the chocolate give way to your blow.

Billie Mochow's sugar egg

Billie Mochow, a renowned pastry chef in the U.S., asked me to look for egg molds last year, a month or so after Easter. She wanted to create for a confection, not chocolate, for this year. Now, Italy bends with the seasons. At that point, Easter was well behind us. There were no egg molds in cookware shops. I approached a couple of pastry shops to see if they could special order them, but I got a lukewarm reception.

The egg season was over. Billie found her own source and has produced an incredible work of art. And just as I expected, egg molds began appearing in upscale cookware shops a few weeks ago, but they’ll be gone soon.