Cooking for a Holiday - Easter, Bonus Recipe - Pizza Rustica

It's true that my Easter dinner menu is not long on Italian food.  For that, there's Christmas, which will forever mean lasagna, as long as there is breath in my body.  With a meat sauce that would make Baby Jesus cry.  But since we eat Italian food just about every day, we can allow for a little break from the ordinary on holidays.  Then it becomes a tradition, and traditions are beautiful, strong, and terrifying things, to be departed from only at great risk to your mental health.

For example...

One Thanksgiving, when I was pregnant with my first (Nikki), we went to my husband Anthony's Aunt Geraldine's house for dinner.  Now, under normal circumstances, roast turkey is my favorite food.  Being pregnant, I had worked myself into an absolute food-craving FRENZY during the weeks leading up to the holiday.  But when we got to Aunt Geraldine's...antipasto and manicotti.  "I thought we'd do something a little different," she said, completely unaware of the terrible thing she had done to me.  I was devastated.  I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.  The next day, Anthony went to the butcher and begged him for a turkey (we were new at this "with child" thing; I assure you that was the last time he ever did anything like that).  And I ate the whole goddam bird.  I never trusted Thanksgiving to anyone else again

.

Speaking of Aunt Geraldine, there is an Italian food that's traditional at Easter:  pizza rustica.  This is her recipe.  It's my husband's favorite food.  Were it up to Anthony, it is the only thing we would eat to celebrate The Resurrection.  However, Nikki doesn't like it, and she has become very attached to our white-bread Easter.  So I make a pizza rustica for St. Anthony's Day, June 13th, which is my husband's birthday.

Aunt Geraldine called this pizza italiana.  Anthony calls it calzone.  Whatever.  It's worth the effort.

Pizza Rustica

Dough:

3 eggs

1/2 cup of olive oil

1 cup of milk

5 cups of flour

1 tsp of salt

3 tsp of baking powder

Beat the eggs, add the oil, and stir.  Then add the milk.  In a separate bowl, stir the dry ingredients together, then add them - a little at a time - to the eggs.  When it's all mixed (and you may need to use your hands at the end), knead the dough for a minute or so, and divide the ball into two.  On a floured surface, roll out the two balls into the shape of your baking pan.  Aunt Geri used a big pie plate, but I prefer a rectangular pan, 9" X 13".  Grease the pan, and line the bottom and sides with one of the rolled-out doughs.

Filling:

2 1/2 lbs. of loose Italian sausage, the hot stuff

2 1/2 lbs. of ricotta

5 eggs

1/2 cup of grated Romano cheese

Fresh Italian parsley, chopped fine

Salt and pepper, to taste

Bake or fry the sausage, breaking it up with a fork.  Let cool.  Beat the ricotta with 4 of the eggs and all the rest of the ingredients.  Mix the sausage with the ricotta.  Spread mixture on the bottom layer of dough, and top with the other one.  If you like, you can "flute" the crusts by pinching them together every inch or so.  Prick the top crust a few times with a fork and then brush it with the beaten yolk of the last egg.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes to an hour, or until golden brown.

If, by the smallest chance imaginable, your marinara sauce doesn't result in a marriage proposal from your heart's desire, try a pizza rustica.

And if that doesn't work, he's an idiot.  Move on. 

Cooking for a Holiday - Easter, Part III - The Recipes

Logically, a shopping list would be the next step after creating a menu, but I don't want to send you out shopping without knowing what you're shopping for.  So, before we do the shopping list, here are some of the recipes from my Easter menu:

Egg & Cheese Strata 

This looks like a real recipe, because I got it from one of my husband Anthony's aunts, the second wife/non-Italian.  That's why there's so much butter in it, which is not a bad thing where your tastebuds are concerned.  This stuff is easy, it's cheap, it feeds a lot of people, and it tastes good.  What's not to love?  You can prep the strata the night before, cover it with foil, and put it in the fridge.  Then, just throw it in the oven on Easter Day.

2 loaves of cheap white bread, like Wonder Bread, crusts trimmed

2 sticks of butter, softened

8 eggs, slightly beaten

5 cups of milk

4 cups (2 big packages) of shredded cheddar cheese

1 tsp dry mustard (I don't know if this makes any difference or not)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a large baking pan with butter.  I like the huge cheap aluminum disposable roaster pans you can get at the grocery store, and they can be washed and re-used if you're careful with them.   Place a layer of buttered bread at the bottom of the pan.   Sprinkle with 1/3 of the cheese.  Stagger a second layer of buttered bread and sprinkle with another 1/3 of the cheese.  Stagger a third layer of buttered bread.   Combine eggs, milk, and mustard in a big bowl and pour over everything, BEFORE you top with cheese.  Press everything down with a fork.   Now you can top it with the rest of the cheese.  Bake about 50 minutes to an hour, or until browned and fluffy.  Cut into squares.   Die happy.

Roast Potatoes & Onions

Peel some potatoes and cut them into pieces.  As many potatoes as will fit in your pan, however big you like your pieces, the recipe's the same.  Spray one of those big disposable aluminum roaster pans with some non-stick spray and put the potato pieces in it.  Drizzle the potatoes with about 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Now, pay attention because here's the secret:  rub the olive oil on the potato pieces with your clean, bare hands.  I don't know why this makes a difference, but it does.  I'm giving credit where it's due:  I learned this trick from Anthony.  And that just the kind of person I am.

Peel and cut up a big onion, however you want.  Add the onion to the potatoes (with a spoon, for Chrissake, we're talking onions here).  Salt and pepper to taste.  You can sprinkle with a little dried rosemary, if you like it.  Put the pan in a 350 degree oven.  Stir the potatoes after they've been in the oven for 5 minutes, then occasionally after that.  Bake about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, or until brown and a little crispy.

Asparagus with Brown Butter

This one is from Anthony's dad, the famous ristorante owner.  Whatever his faults, and they were few, the man could cook.

Wash and break the ends off of some asparagus and steam it, or boil it in salted water but don't let it get too soft.  In the meantime, put two sticks of butter in a small frying pan.  Turn the heat on low under the butter and let it melt.  After it's melted, keep cooking it and skim off the white milk solids, until you're left with a (mostly) clear liquid.  Then keep cooking the butter until it turns brown.   Pour it over the asparagus when you serve it.  You won't believe how good this is.

Mrs. D's Fruit Salad

For the first seven years of Anthony's and mine various marital situations - dating, living in sin (sorry, Sister Arnoldine), married (but not in "the church") - we had a roommate.  No kidding.  His name was Giuglio DiVincenzo and he was divorced (from a nice Italian girl, an infamia).  He was like the uncle who moved back home to save money, and he eventually got rich on the stock market and became a Republican.  He was from Boston, and his sainted Italian mother was a genius in cucina.  This is her recipe.

Take some fruit.  Whatever you like.  I do canned pineapple chunks and mandarin orange slices, fresh green grapes, and maraschino cherries (because I freaking love them), but you can use what you want.  Wash the fruit, if it's fresh, and put it all together into a colander (or squolabasta, for you "in" people) in the sink to drain out the liquid.  In a big bowl whip 3 small containers of heavy whipping cream.  It takes a little time for it to turn into real whipped cream, so don't give up (or make one of the kids do it) and I recommend an electric mixer, though I used to do it myself by hand, back in the days when I was still stupid.  Once it's whipped, fold in (with a rubber scraper) the smallest container of sour cream you can find.  That's it.  Mix with the fruit and chill, in both senses of the word.

The ham is the ham.  Don't fuss with it.  Put it in a big pan, make a foil "tent" over it, cook it 20 minutes to the pound (if it's big) or 35 minutes to the pound (if it's little).  Take the tent off during the last half hour.  Everything else on The Menu, you can buy.  Or have somebody bring it.  If you trust them. 

* * *

I'm a little annoyed today since, last night, Anthony (my soon-to-be-ex, if he doesn't get off my back) dared to question my cooking.   For the record, I have never served food in this house that Anthony didn't have a "little suggestion" about.   This time it was about mushrooms.

"Is there a way you can cook them where they don't get smaller?"

"No."

"I'm just asking.  Maybe if you didn't overcook them?"

Now I ask you, what jury would convict me?