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Pizza
di Pasqua
Sweet
air of the Marches in spring often echoes with shy bleating of just weaned
lambs. Their mothers can now give to shepherds precious candid milk that
will soon be transformed in shapes of delicious cheese, tasted at each
point of ripening, in every occasion.
Exactly
that rich sheep cheese, obtained from the first milking is used to prepare
the so-called Pizza di Pasqua
(Easter Pizza), the aspect of which reminds of typical Italian Christmas
cake ("panettone"). It is not by chance that this pizza occupies
a place of honour in the gastronomic tradition of the Marches.
The
result is a morbid round odorous and tasteful bellied pizza, ideal to
satisfy epicurean appetite at one bite. Accompanied with a slice of local
salami and watered with Verdicchio, it gives a rarely equilibrated union
of tastes.
As
it usually happens to dishes deriving from remote rural traditions, even
Pizza di Pasqua exists in numerous versions and recipes, always in
reference with definite areas of the territory of the Marches. (Today, the
connoisseurs qualify it a masterpiece
of gastronomy.)
In
the area of Pesaro, for example,
it is known and appreciated under the name of “crescia brusca”, while in Jesi,
according to tradition, it is served during the sumptuous dinner that
follows Easter Mass.
The
ingredients are more or less the same (flour, eggs, oil, lard, milk,
yeast, salt, pepper and as much sheep cheese as you like, either ripened
and grated or fresh in cubes). Each housewife, of course, enriches Pizza
di Pasqua with her own personal secret (handed over from generation to
generation), in order to distinguish it from the others, with equally
unique fragrance and flavour.
In
occasion of a recent White Truffle
of Acqualagna Fair, in an attempt to renew an old tradition, this
thick and soft pizza has been flavoured, obviously, with truffle, and has
thus been added strong and sharp flavour.
If
in several villages folk celebrations dedicated to crescia
di Pasqua take place (as the one in Colbordolo),
a sweet version of this pizza was invented in other villages. The same
dough has been enriched with sultana and candied fruits instead of sheep
cheese.
Pizza
with cheese, however, the one that belongs to the peasant tradition,
remains always official Pizza di Pasqua. Those who could taste this
speciality of the Marches will certainly never forget intense fragrance
spreading from it while cutting its soft golden crumb.
© 2001 Liberation Ventures Ltd.
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