Little Easter – Big Meal, Italy’s Traditional Post-Easter Sunday Picnic

A feast to make you feel like you’ve died and gone to Heaven

I grew up in the United States where we celebrated Easter this way: an egg hunt in the morning, usually indoors because Wisconsin spring weather rarely cooperated; late morning Church services; and a big lunch with family. Although, I grew up in a Catholic family, I first found out about Little Easter Monday in Italy. Perhaps, because we were mostly German.

Linda's famous lasagna

Pasquetta, or Easter Monday, is, in theory, an important religious holiday. I keep forgetting why. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the day before––Easter Sunday–– but with all the lasagna, roast lamb, potatoes with fresh picked rosemary, artichokes, wine, and visits from friends and family, there’s never been time to talk about the spiritual meaning of the Monday after. I would like to know what the spiritual importance of Easter Monday is, but for years, just as I begin to recover from Easter Sunday, but before I find the energy to ask, we set out on the annual Pasquetta picnic. Or, because we are in Navelli, the area around L’Aquila, we start setting plates on the long table in the basement taverna. This is because of yet another spring snow storm. Sometimes you can ski in Abruzzo, less than two hours from Rome, deep into May

Pasquetta is Italy’s other picnic holiday, an old-world cousin of Memorial Day or Labor Day in the U.S. Grill-outs with arrosticini (http://wp.me/pfkhI-1W), local pork sausages, bruschetta (grilled bread with olive oil on top–– and diced fresh tomatoes in the summer), fried artichokes, lamb ribs, more lasagna, salami and pizza di pasqua (not really pizza but a semi-sweet traditional bread), aged pecorino cheese, and lots of wine. Pasquetta is one of those occasions when I prefer a chilled Cerasuolo, the rosé made from Montepulciano d’Abruzzo grapes. It goes well with the slight burning of the mountain sun on your face and the wild mixture of foods.

Easter Dinner 2010, My Plate

Good rosés, like the Cerasuolo’s from Cataldi Madonna (Ofena) or Valle Reale (Popoli) are never compromises.

This year I’ll be going easy on the wine. Pasquetta 2010 falls on the eve of the first anniversary of the disastrous earthquake that hit L’Aquila and over forty surrounding towns. The earthquake that killed over 300 people and routed tens of thousands from their homes (including us). The earthquake that seriously damaged one of Italy’s largest historical centers. The center that is still l mostly off-limits to all but firefighters and work crews clearing the rubble.

Lamb, potatoes, Pasqua 2010

We will celebrate Easter and celebrate Pasquetta. We will commemorate our city and the friends and relatives and daily life we lost at 3.32 in the morning of April 6, 2009.
We want L’Aquila, which means “the Eagle” to rise up and fly again. It’s an obvious metaphor, but then it’s also obvious that L’Aquila should be rebuilt. Not just the buildings, but its economy, traditions, and community.

– Joshua Lawrence

PS: The other Italian picnic holiday, Italy’s traditional picnic per eccellenza, is Ferragosto (August 15th). Although it, too, is an important religious holiday, its spiritual significance escapes me for the same reason––I’m too busy digesting.

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The Wine in the Willows

Teo loves freshwater shrimp. I really don’t know if they are what I used to call crayfish or crawdads or a european cousin, but here they are just gamberi di fiume, or “river shrimp” to most of us.

Teo is part of the gang of kids that my daughters hang out with when we are in Navelli for the holidays. Is father is from a nearby town of Bussi, just downstream on the Tirino river from Capestrano (the original one) and finally we were able to accept his invitation to their favorite restaurant in the area: Il Salice.
The restaurant’s name means willow, recalling outdoor summer feasts when this tiny eatery’s tables multiply out into the garden and overlooking terrace. In the winter it’s a cozy, reservation only, family run trattoria with a fireplace in the corner and black and white photos of the town Bussi in the twenties and thirties scattered along the walls.

Read tasties

Bussi, like Capestrano, Popoli and other towns along the Tirino and the nearby source of the Pescara river are famous for trout and freshwater shrimp, often so fresh they were swimming in the untreated water from a nearby brook just a few hours or even minutes before reaching your plate.
Some of my friends who are passionate about seafood frown upon fresh water fish and crustaceans, and they are right that there is much more variety in the salty sea. But why close your options.
Fernanda runs the place with motherly care and Francesca, her daughter, adds skill and passionate creativity in the kitchen (more on her creations in later post). Freshwater shrimp look a lot like their counterparts in the sea, and the taste is similar, just a little more delicate. After a huge, tasty and surprising (more next time) tableful of antipasti we were off to the first course: homemade maccheroni alla chitarra (Abruzzo’s most famous pasta form, similar to thick, spaghetti) with either a light tomato sauce with stewed shrimp. For those of you who can’t or don’t eat tomatoes, Fania loved the tomatoless version they served her.

Pino serves Maccheroni con Gamberi di Fiume (sugo rosso)

Then, stuffed to the gills, came the colpo di grazia, platters full of shiny red shrimp, saltati in white wine, olive oil, and laurel. As a kid I would have hated it, all that work cracking them open for so little food. But Teo is not like I was, or anyone at lunch yesterday.
The wine was one of my favorite: Cataldi Madonna’s Cerasuolo, the local rosé made from Montepulciano D’Abruzzo grapes in the nearby town of Ofena. Good rosés are not compromises, and in the winter I think they sometimes go better with seafood.

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Maccheroni con Gamberi di Fiume in Bianco

Sunny Aftermath

Today is one of those sunny Sundays in Navelli where the intensity of the light play subtle tricks on your eyes. From the shade of the gazebo in the family garden the trees between me and the crisp blue sky seem like layers of scenery on a too real to be real cinemascope movie background. The cumulous clouds would be cut outs if the didn’t slowly change in and move by in the sky. Soon it will be lunchtime. The earthquake seems so far away.
Yesterday the sky and light were the same, but it was much more than that.
It was Ferragosto.
Ferragosto is Italy’s Labour Day and Fourth of July weekends rolled into one. In theory it’s a religious holiday (it’s the day the Virgin Mary rose to heaven) but beyond those who go to church services in the morning, the day revolves around picnicking with friends and family. Everybody is eating in large groups, and if weather permits, you must eat outdoors.
Grilled meats are king. Sausages, lamb, ribs, fresh pancetta and more. In Abruzzo arrosticini (little skewers of tiny cubes of mutton roast over coals), are everywhere. The smell of smoke and grizzling fat remind me of the childhood cookouts on Lake Wingra in Madison, Wisconsin. Then I open my eyes and see the mountains and not the canoe filled lakes of my memories.
Yesterday the garden in Navelli was filled with friends and relatives, sitting and milling along the long row of tables between the pine trees and the roses. Some where here for the the whole day, others stopping in on the way to or from other outdoor feasts. Lunch revolved around Linda’s roast lamb and her famous lasagna. Following the local tradition it’s made of fresh pasta, local mozzarella and ragù (tomato and meat sauce). No béchamel here. Antipasto was local pecorino cheese with honey with crushed pistachios, local salami and hand cut prosciutto ham with figs.
If you’ve tried prosciutto e melone (dried ham and cantaloupe), try graduating up to prosciutto and fresh figs. The contrast of sappy sweet and salty are part of what makes summers in Italy a step closer to taste bud heaven. (Honey and cheese can be done all year round, and in the winter you can put it cheeses after roasting them over a fire).
I’ll just let you imagine the rest.

Except for the wine: Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Cerasuolo. Chilled. Unlike Sicily’s ruby red and blood thick Cerasuolo della Vittoria, Cerasuolo from Montepulciano is a rosé. The name “cerasuolo” traces it’s root to cherries, just different cherries. If you don’t like rosé wines, you just have not tried a good Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Good “pink” wines are not compromises between white and red, they are a category all their own.
Yesterday ours were Valle Reale’s Vigne Nuove table wine label from the valleys near Popoli and the Villa Gemma label from Masciarelli (near the coast). My favorites of all time have been from Caldadi Madonna in the Tirino valley next to us, below the town of Ofena.
Time for lunch. Then a nap. It is Sunday, after all.

Geraniums on the front porch in Navelli

The Chick Pea Dry Run

It’s confirmed, not even a devastating earthquake can cancel Navelli’s annual chick pea and saffron feast (Sagra di Ceci e dello Zafferano). The village’s Pro Loco association is already frenetically preparing for one of Abruzzo’s most loved summer events. The town is full of signs organizing this and that. One of the most delicate parts is ensuring that the Pro Loco gets its hands one enough of the local variety of chick pea from the small producers.
We had a small taste of things to come last night. A cover band played in Piazza San Pelino in support of the local earthquake recovery and Emily and Sofia and their middle school-aged friends danced away.
The pro loco prepared a delicious garbanzo bean soup and small, baton-shaped pizze fritte (salted fried dough) that we washed down with cool Cerasuolo Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Cerasuolo rosè wine from the Abruzzo coast (or Paulaner beer on tap). For the meat-eaters there were arrosticini (snack sized mutton skewers) for the kids and a good porchetta. Porchetta is an entire boned pig roast on a spit and then sliced horizontally and eat either alone or on sandwiches. Good, but never as good as Gianni’s. But then that’s another story.
The Sagra will be Saturday August 22nd and Sunday the 23rd. It’s great food with indigenous ingredients and lots of dancing; line, group and ballroom in the main square and a disco until the small hours of the night nearby.
The star attraction is the Sunday afternoon donkey race, a play on the Palio di Siena. It’s a must for anyone who loves Italian asses, big and small.

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