Happy to have Aunt Anna from Brooklyn here to spend Easter with us.
She’ll the family for today’s big feast, which will include glazed ham, eggplant Parmigiana, scalloped potatoes, sauteed asparagus and candied carrots.
Add the homemade accompaniments and appetizers our guests will deliver. They’ll include our daughter-in-law’s savory salad, my sister-in-law’s signature stuffed mushrooms, and a variety of wines, compliments of my son.
We’ll also be enjoying my contribution as a first course. It’s called il rotolo di pasta, a fabulous dish conceived by famed cookbook author Marcella Hazan.
Homemade pasta is rolled and flattened into thin sheets with the aid of a handy appliance attached to our mixer.
The sheets of pasta are then spread with a mixture of ricotta, spinach and grated Pecorino Romano cheese, rolled into log shapes, wrapped and tied in cheesecloth, boiled, sliced, and layered in a casserole dish with tomato sauce and a velvety bechamel prepared by simmering butter with a little flour, cream, and more grated cheese.
It’s baked until bubbly.
For dessert, we’ll enjoy the fabulous Italian pastries Aunt Anna purchased at her favorite Brooklyn bakery before boarding her flight. The heavenly treats include cannoli, rainbow cookies, baba au rum, tiramisu, sfogliatella (cream-filled, shell-shaped pastries), plus a number of other treasures hard to find west of Flatbush Avenue.
But that’s the dinner menu.
For breakfast, we’ll be enjoying Aunt Anna’s traditional Easter sensation called Pizzagaina.
She’s been preparing it since she arrived.
It’s also known as Italian Easter Pie, but it’s so much more than a mere pie as it’s baked in a large cake pan and includes mozzarella, ricotta, grated cheese, ham, sausage, salami, mortadella, pepperoni and 15 eggs.
It’s baked inside a flaky pastry shell.
It will serve as breakfast and likely lunch and is bound to last several days beyond Easter as it weighs more than my granddaughter.
We’re certain to enjoy lots of laughs plus great dinner conversation, although some will have difficulty understanding Aunt Anna as she hardly speaks English having lived in America for only 60 years.
She lives in New York City where the Italian population approaches the entire number of residents in San Diego. She resides in the middle of a neighborhood where the grocers, bankers, clothing store operators, restaurant owners, and virtually all the markets are Italian owned or operated, so there’s little need to be burdened by a second language.
She did, however, learn sufficient English to her citizenship test about a half-century ago, although she still laments the fact that she missed a single question in the civics portion of the exam, insisting to this day, her answer was accurate.
“What was the question?” I inquired.
“Who wrote the Constitution?”
“And what was your answer?” I asked.
“The fondling fathers,” she replied.
“Buona Pasqua,” dear reader.
Erdos is a freelance humor columnist. him at [email protected].
