Easter Sunday

Reliving the fantastic stories and of course food my family shared this past Easter, including Easter bread, pizza rustica, and timpano.

The Saturday night before Easter Sunday in my house was a whirlwind of cooking, cleaning, and dying eggs. We had spent the day exploring Sagamonre Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s Long Island home, also known as the “summer white house,” but the night was all about food preparation. My brother Ben, his fiancé Julie, and I all had our own assignments of cooking for the holiday the next day; Julie’s was the traditional braided Easter bread (with all those pretty dyed eggs on top), Ben’s was a pizza rustica (a traditional Italian Easter pie, similar to a quiche stuffed with meats and cheeses) and mine was a simple stuffed eggplant. The next day we were expecting 12 people over for Easter dinner (a small amount compared to some of our other holidays) and we waned to make sure we had enough food, without having to spend all day in the kitchen.

 

Little did we know, my dad and step mom Nicole had crafted a timpano, an Italian specialty of fresh pasta sheets stuffed with meatballs, sausage, and more pasta. Plus my uncle Mick brought over a tray of incredible meatballs, and my uncle Larry a tray of mini egg rolls, a nod to my grandparents, who usually cooked every other day of the year and used Easter dinner as an excuse to order Chinese food. All in all, we had more than enough food for a dinner filled with wine and laughter, the same way we spend almost every other holiday. Here’s a break down of what we made, and the recipes used as a guide to crafting these treats.

 

My brother’s fiancé Julie doesn’t usually cook very often – she serves as my brother’s sous chef for most of his cooking adventures – but when she does put her mind to making something it usually comes out pretty fantastic, and that’s exactly what happened with this Easter bread. She told us that her mom and her grandmother would make this traditional bread complete with beautiful dyed eggs on top, and her take on this task was quite successful. The bread dough has a bit of sugar in it, which makes it slightly sweet and similar to a challah bread, and it comes out just as light and airy. The dough is separated, rolled out into a long snake, and then twisted and braided into a star shape with dyed eggs stuck in between the braids. Julie and I had a good time dying the eggs, and I tried out a few creative techniques that sadly didn’t come out quite as well as expected. Check out this recipe that Julie used to accomplish this delicious and beautiful Easter bread.

 

Pizza rustica was a dish that we had every once in a while at Easter time. My aunt Camille, who used to be a big baker, would make it every few years, and it quickly became one of my brother’s favorite dishes, understandably so because of the copious amounts of meats and cheese stuffed inside. The recipe is a mostly simple one: pie crust layered in a spring form pan and filled with a base off egg, cheese, and meat, similar to a quiche, and then topped with more crust and baked.

 

Ever since my brother and I started doing Easter dinner for our family, he’s made a pizza rustica, and every year he tries to outdo himself from the year past. I’d say this this year it was certainly the best one yet, with a beautiful woven and crispy crust and a creamy and perfectly salty filling. He loosely followed this New York Time recipe for pizza rustica, with a few simplifications (pre-made pie crust instead of homemade, just as good) and a few modifications (more prosciutto and soppressata, a heck of a lot more parmesan and pecorino cheese).

 

Next up was the highly impressive timpano. This recipe was inspired by a favorite movie of ours – Big Night – with a fantastically Italian scene in which the chefs of a restaurant spend all day making the dish only to have the man they are serving stand up violently and shout out with seeming anger, and then kiss the chef with adoration for completing such a dish as the famed timpano.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4lZcEY4nII[/embedyt]

On the outside, timpano doesn’t look all two appetizing, especially because my dad used fresh spinach pasta and it ended up looking like a big green blob. But on the inside, it’s stuffed with all sorts of goodness. Fresh pasta sheets are layered in a deep pot and over proof bowl (he used a Dutch oven) and then filled with layers of more pasta, meatballs, sausage, and veggies. Since Nicole is a vegetarian, they opted out of the sausage and used eggplant meatballs (which were fantastic) along with broccoli rabe, sautéed mushrooms, and lots of cheese.

 

Flipping the timpano out of the pan is a feat in itself, but then you get to cut it open and reveal all those beautiful layers of tastiness. You can check out this New York Times recipe for timpano (known as the ‘Big Night’ timpano) that my dad and Nicole used as a base for their vegetarian version.

 

All in all, out cooking endeavors this past Easter were quite successful, and I’m excited to try them out during the rest of the year as well, and I encourage you all to do the same. Because with a bit of wine, family, and laughter, any day is the perfect excuse to cook an incredible meal.