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EASTER IN ITALY And A few-Travel Precautions April 20, 1998: Easter in Italy-Rather than brave the crowds of Rome, I celebrated Easter small-town style in Vernazza on Italy's Riviera. As the church bells rang I ran to the waterfront to wash my face in the salt water with the locals. (I still don't understand why, but when in Vernazza I do as the Vernazzans do.) Easter morning the sun shined and the wind blew. The village filled the simple medieval stone church on the harborfront. As each wave crashed over the breakwater, reflected light filled the church.

A direct train now connects the Cinque Terre to Venice. Venice is crowded year 'round. It's not crowded with locals--in my lifetime its population has dropped from 250,000 to about 50,000. But it's crowded with just about everything else. There's almost no low season for tourism (always call in advance for a good room). Ten years ago a good Venetian restaurant would cater to locals and get 80% of its business from them. Now a "local" restaurant cannot stay in business without tourists.


And Venice is crowded with pigeons. Locals call them "rats with wings" and are feeding them a kind of birth control pill mixed into their seed. And speaking of rats, Venice is crowded with them too. In fact, many say Venice is supported by rats. Locals recommend not riding a gondola at low tide--that's when all the rats are exposed, and there's nothing romantic about a foot-long rat under the Bridge of Sighs.


Regardless of the tide, women can find romance on gondola rides--even without a partner. Gondoliers are notorious for offering women a private ride later on..."Here, why don't you try the oar. It's very dangerous...let me hold you. Ahhh, the moon, me and you and the lagoon..." Be warned--Venetians say a girl who marries a gondolier expecting him to be true has "hams over her eyes."


I met a clever woman shopping for clothes in Rome. She explained, "If I buy now in Italy, I'll be in style in the USA for the year 2000." She was following my guidebook but, to wisely keep a low profile, she had it hidden in a plain paper bookcover.


Rome is a brutal place. Gypsy pickpockets have long used babies as props for distracting their victims. Now they have a new trick: they toss the baby into the arms of unsuspecting victims. Of course, the tourist has no choice but to catch the baby...while the mom empties his pockets. Then the thief angrily takes back her baby and flees. Of course I wouldn't suggest you let the baby fall--but if you're wearing your moneybelt, feeling the mother's hand in your pockets will be just another interesting cultural experience.


Throughout Italy people elegantly stroll. But in Rome the passagiata features a little more contact. It's called the Struscia (literally, "rubbing"). Rather than murmuring delicate compliments of "bella" and "bello," boys and girls hail each other more as consumables and say "buona" and "buono."


And in Italy, like everywhere else, older people have a fear of computers. Counseling a hotelier about the beauties of e-mail, he asked me if it was possible humans might actually catch one of those pesky computer viruses.


Happy travels,


RICKSPATCH FROM EUROPE

April 20, 1998: Easter in Italy

Rick .

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Cover Story...

Easter, Italian Style.

    by Maryann Ruperto

Growing up in an Italian-American household, my family, like most Italian families, needed little provocation to gather on special occasions and even less on religious holidays. The Easter holiday was anxiously awaited, especially after 6 weeks of fasting and abstinence during Lent. The opportunity to visit with distant relatives and other loved ones was one of the things that we all anticipated, but what really made those occasions memorable was the feasting, a chance to break from our normal routine and enjoy special foods. Even now the sight, smell, or sometimes just the mention of a particular item can conjure up memories of a

holiday from my childhood. Just as Christmas is characterized by typical foods such as baccala (dried cod), capitone (eel), tortelline in broda and panettone, Easter too has it's typical specialities. While dishes may vary from region to region, and sometimes from family to family within the same region, there are many dishes that are common throughout Italy, with only the ingredients varying. Those common dishes provide a sense of continuity with our heritage and brotherhood with our fellow Italians, while those dishes particular to an area, highlight the uniqueness of the regions from which they hail. My family's food traditions are clearly weighted toward those of the Abruzzi region, since my mother was always the cook and of Abruzzese heritage.


Our Easter "dinner" always began early in the day with a delicious clear broth served with fried croutons, sometimes called pancotta. This was just a teasing precursor to the tempting multitude of festive dishes which followed. In our home this meant lamb.Historically, whole baby lamb, which is symbolic of Jesus Christ, and whole suckling kid, were roasted over open air spits. This tradition persists even to today, although some families prefer leg of lamb roasts simply for convenience sake.


While Lamb certainly makes an impressive presentation, the Italian feast features a whole array of foods. In our home, it was always accompanied by garlic roasted potatoes, a tossed salad made with Italian greens such as romaine lettuce and red peppers. Along with this we had large bowls of olives, marinated artichoke hearts, pimientos, sliced tomatoes topped with fresh parsley and garlic, and finocchio. Our feast, as well as any "proper" Italian feast, always included plenty of wine.


Breads have always played an important role in all Italian meals but especially on festive occasions. Throughout much of modern-day history, bread was the primary staple in the Italian peasant's meager diet. As such, it was considered the "staff of life", long before pasta assumed this role. The ordinary or everyday bread which Italians eat daily is like a long-time friend, comforting and dependable, but it is the feast day breads, or pani festivi, for which we longed. These can range from simple to quite complex concoctions. In my home, this meant "pizza", a round yeast dough about one and one half inches high, with a dimpled surface, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with course salt. Simple yet delicious. Most of us are familiar with a rich egg bread, which is common throughout much of Europe, whereby the dough is braided, brushed with egg or milk, and then baked to a golden color. In Calabria, a whole egg is inserted into the holes in the braid. Eggs are frequently used in Easter baking to symbolize life, fertility, and birth. In Umbria, they make an Easter cheese bread called Crescia al formaggio. It is a rich, brioche like dough baked in a flower pot, which gives it its characteristic shape. Around Rome, Pizza Civitavecchia, an egg rich, sweet bread dough, made with ricotta, port or rum, and aniseed, is eaten.This bread is easily recognizable because of its characteristic slanted domed top. Probably one of the most popular breads is the Colomba Pasquale.

There are several legends surrounding the origins of this sweet bread, which comes from either the Milan or Pavia area. Both cities claim to have invented it first. The dough is arranged in 2 pieces to look like a bird (a dove) and it is covered with crystalized sugar and whole, unpeeled almonds. One of the more intriguing "breads" is the gubana, which is more like a dessert than a bread. With origins dating back to possibly the 6th century A.D. in the Friuli region, the filling for this bread is rich with several varieties of nuts, dried fruit, spices, and liqueurs.

Pupa Easter bread

Another dish which is often prepared for Easter throughout Italy's many regions are "pies" or tortas made from cheeses and meats such as sausage or prosciutto. One common to Sicily is comprised of macaroni, pork, cheese and eggs. The Calabrian version is made with ham, sausage, hard-boiled eggs, mozzarella and ricotta. In Liguria, they prefer a torta Pasqualina which contains spinach, ricotta, other cheeses and eggs.
No self-respecting Italian household, mine included, would ever conclude a meal without partaking of several additional courses. The first of these is a tray of fruit, a favorite in all Italian homes. Typically included are grapes, oranges or tangerines, pears, and figs. Along with this is served dolci (sweets), coffee, and liqueurs or wine. Dessert was perhaps the favorite part of our meal because that was when we could finally sample the pasqua torta, a delicately flavored, sweetened ricotta pie. Similar sweet pies or pizzas are found throughout mountainous regions of Italy, where their highly prized goat's milk is used to make a very flavorful and smooth ricotta. Most often these pies are flavored with lemon rind and cinnamon. Pies may vary in their ingredients to sometimes include rice or whole grains, as is the case with Pastiero, a pie from Naples. As often happens in many an Italian home, limiting a festa to one dessert would never suffice. Another Easter tradition in my family is a cake which my nana always made. It is very much like the texture of biscotti and flavored with aniseed and either orange or lemon rind. The cakes are baked in the shape of a woman, if the recipient is a girl, or in the shape of a bird, if the recipient is a boy, and a hard-boiled egg is placed in the "stomach" of the woman and the bird. Then they are decorated with a thin multi-colored icing and nonpareils. Each of the kids in the family receives his or her own cake. The unveiling of these cakes always generates quite a bit of excitement as we await to see how each will be decorated. This dolci is reminiscent of the Colomba Pasquale in shape, but the texture is very different.


Italian Easter dolci run the gambit from very simple tarts with lemon, nut, or fruit fillings, to complex and rich combinations of ingredients such as in cassata. This Sicilian Easter speciality is made from sponge cake, ricotta, liqueurs, chocolate and candied peels.


I hope that you have enjoyed reading about my family's Easter customs as much as I have enjoyed sharing them and that you have learned about some of the many Easter food traditions from other parts of Italy. These customs are something that we look forward to with as much certainty as the sun rising on Easter morn. The Easter celebratory dinner includes quite an array of foods but none of it would be nearly as delicious if not for the blessing of being able to share and enjoy it with family and friends.


Maryann Ruperto


Ruperto/DePasquale Italian Heritage and Genea...

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