When my brother and I were small, Easter was a big deal. Pre-Easter, the family gathered in the kitchen for an elaborate egg coloring event initiated by my dad who insisted that every member of the family have a specific egg color. For himself, he dyed a half-red and half-blue egg, challenging both his own dexterity and the integrity of 1980’s PAS wire egg dippers.
On Easter day, all the members of our family would come over for the annual “Egg Hunt” in our backyard. The roster of competitors was unimpressive. It included:
My Great Uncle Harry who I never remember being under the age of 90.
My Great Aunt Emily, Harry’s wife, renowned for astronomical crankiness coupled with equal levels of gin consumption.
My Grandma, my dad’s mom, of indeterminate age (she never let on how old she actually was).
My Grandpa, my mom’s dad, my favorite family member.
My mom.
My brother, John, 4 1/2 years younger than me.
Me, Undisputed Egg Hunt Champion.
I must admit that the “masters” competitors exhibited reckless enthusiasm for this charade, charging around the yard, plastic collection bags waving in their wake, attempting to collect eggs that were noticeably perched in our landscaped hydrangeas.
I found extreme joy in winning the hunt, punting smaller (my bother) and slower (everyone else) competitors out of the way. Even though the actual prizes were meager: quarters, jelly beans, and M&M’s were typical booty, the glory of being Egg Hunt Champ - THAT was everlasting.
In later years (my 30’s and even 40’s), my mom attempted to keep the tradition alive. At one point, it was just John and I running around out there chasing each other. Enthusiasm was waning, but I kept the joy and cut throat attitude alive, something I can cheerfully do when I’m winning. It’s admittedly a habit of mine that I’m not trying too hard to break (more on that another time).
After this physically (and for some, mentally) challenging event, the family would retire to our dining room for Easter dinner.
Unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are only a few Easter dishes that stand out for me, as our Easter menu is just a regurgitation (sorry) of other holiday meals.
When my Uncle Harry was alive, he would supply the “anitpasto”. In Italian families, this can mean many things, and for Uncle Harry it certainly did. He would bring two, rotating tiered Lazy Susan’s (one for each end of a very small table) filled with:
Black olives (which my brother would stick on the end of each of his fingertips
Roasted and marinated red peppers
Marinated ceci beans (Chick Peas), or as we called them, “chee chee” beans
White fish
Chopped chicken livers with hardboiled egg and white onions (my personal favorite)
Shrimp cocktail
My dad augmented all this with various soppressata and mozzarella and provolone cheeses.
After eating all that, there was still a full meal and dessert. While dinner has escaped my memory, dessert is quite memorable.
My mom makes two desserts for Easter. One is an epic deep dish apple pie. It’s my brother’s favorite dessert and he requests it.
The next dessert is my mom’s attempt at tradition. It’s a Pastiera Napoletana which is an Italian cheesecake from Naples. It has a pie crust with a woven top, contains citrus essence, and is filled with Ricotta cheese and…wheat berries. Why wheat berries? From my cursory research, this pie was once a pagan tradition—a celebration of earth’s abundance and renewal. Each ingredient has meaning, including the whole cooked grains.
While I absolutely love this idea, I truly hate this pie. Or at least I hate my mom’s version of it. In truth, I have never had this cheesecake outside of my mom making it. And while I’m not trying to make fun of her baking, I am trying to make fun of her Pastiera. It’s terrible and I dread it.
Eating just a bite of this cake is the equivalent of swallowing a brick, which after countless marinated vegetables, cheese bits, chicken liver, and whatever else we had is about as welcome as chewing on the table itself.
It’s the kind of pie, that if you removed it from it’s dish and threw it against the wall, it would remain intact. I venture to say it would even bounce back.
Other uses for this pie:
Doorstop
Weight training
Discus (too heavy for frisbee)
Spackle
Ever attend an Easter dinner during which you had to dodge ricochetting Italian pastries? Me either. But this could be the year! Get excited.
However, my cursory research has also revealed that bakers of this pie insist it is both delicious and delicate (what??), like a cross between a rice pudding and a pie.
When I first wrote this post, my intention was to beg my mom NOT to make this pie. I wanted to be saved from the fateful moment of eyeing it on the dining room backsplash and knowing I would (gulp) have to eat a slice. But after revising this post about 40 times since then, looking up various Pastiera recipes and adulations, I found myself on Amazon ordering cooked wheat berries (yes, you can get them pre-cooked), citron, and other supplies so that I CAN MAKE THIS DANG PIE.
That’s right, in the course of writing this post, I have become obsessed with not just the pie, but also the idea that we have been eating a misrepresentation of what would otherwise be a fantastic dessert!
Now, you might suggest I take myself to a reputable Italian bakery (I live within easy driving distance of at least 40,000 of them here in New Jersey) and find a good example, so I can take an informed approach.
This would be a good idea. I am not going to take it, however. Instead, I am going to insist, throwing caution and a catastrophic waste of wheat berries to the wind, that I can make this pie as it is meant to be made.
And so in conclusion, I will promise you, my gentle and skeptical reader THREE things:
I am going to make this pie (Amazon tells me my citron is arriving tomorrow).
I will tell you about it with photographic evidence.
I will apologize to my mom for writing this. She’s really an excellent cook. Except for that time she let the plastic wrapper on the ricotta cheese into the Christmas manicotti. That wasn’t so good, but everything else is a-ok!