How Easter tastes, in my kitchen
A few of my favorite Easter rituals, and a recipe for potato and artichoke tortelli you can freeze and enjoy whenever you like.
There’s a lot of storytelling about Christmas—the twinkling lights, the resin-scented tree, the iced cookies, the children’s books, the cookbooks, the glossy magazines, months of anticipation and build-up—but hardly anyone ever talks about the quiet joys of Easter.
Religious meanings aside, I’ve always had a soft spot for Easter. It’s a celebration of the new season, of nature waking up again—the tender green of new leaves, the buds bursting into bloom, and those first plans for garden lunches with friends, or a proper Easter Monday picnic (Pasquetta, as we call it, even though, let’s be honest, it almost always rains). As a child, Easter was also the day I was finally allowed to wear my spring coat again, or perhaps a crisp white blouse with a little embroidered collar. There was something so thrilling about those first light layers after months of wool and scarves.
Now, the joys of Easter mostly revolve around the table, and a handful of simple family traditions.
It all begins on Palm Sunday, when we go looking in the garden for the loveliest olive twigs to take to Mass and have them blessed. It’s the perfect time to do it, as over the past weeks, we’ve been pruning the olive trees, and there are great heaps of branches waiting to be burnt in a quiet corner of the field. The scent of olive leaves slowly smouldering on a drizzly day, now that’s a memory that stays with you.
This year, we went to Mass in a little country church in Strove, just a short drive from home, along the ancient Via Francigena. It was drizzling outside, but the air was perfumed with the heady, floral scent of a nearby wisteria in full bloom. Inside, the church felt warm and welcoming, just a small group of people gathered close together, each holding a generous bunch of olive twigs. The regular parishioners, guided by the old priest, sang old hymns, their voices rising and falling together, unaccompanied by music. They all seemed to know each other well, as if this tiny church had always been their Sunday meeting place. It felt almost surreal, like stepping into another time.
Now, a blessed olive twig will rest in every home for the coming year, even in our studio. I consider it a quiet token of peace, tradition, and the slow rhythm of the seasons.
These days, we’re on the lookout for the perfect little basket to carry our eggs to Easter Mass to be blessed. It’s another tradition that has left an indelible taste on my tongue, that of plain hard-boiled eggs with a pinch of salt. As much as I adore big, flashy chocolate eggs—the rustle of coloured foil, the slightly tacky plastic surprises inside—I still consider these humble hard-boiled eggs the truest symbol of Easter.
It used to be my grandma who took care of them, gently boiling and peeling each egg, then nestling them into a small ceramic basket lined with one of her embroidered napkins. Then, after a few years of overcooked eggs—green-ringed yolks and that unmistakable sulphurous smell, a sure sign that my mum had been distracted by the Easter lamb and the peas simmering on the stove—I took on the role of family egg boiler. Now I’m the one lowering the eggs into boiling water and setting the timer for exactly nine minutes: just enough to get a firm yolk that’s still slightly creamy in the centre, soft without being runny.
After Mass, we bring the blessed eggs back home, slice them open, and arrange them on a tray to pass around at the very start of our Easter meal.
Eggs are also one of those ingredients I instinctively associate with Easter, found both in the rich, golden pasta dough we roll out for special meals, and in our local Easter sweet bread, a domed schiacciata. The name might suggest something flat, but in fact it refers to the generous number of eggs that are schiacciate—cracked open—into the dough. The result is a soft, yellow-crumbed Easter bread, speckled with aniseed and scented with rosolio di menta, an old-fashioned mint liqueur.
Along with eggs, there are always foraged herbs for a multi-layered green salad, and ricotta, even though not this year, sadly, but in the past it’s been one of my go-to ingredients for plump pasta parcels. Then come all the spring vegetables: asparagus and artichokes, fresh peas and tender fava beans. It’s a celebration of everything green and new, the kind of food that feels like a breath of fresh air after winter.
What to cook this Easter?
If you have Cucina Povera, you’ll find plenty of Easter-inspired recipes to explore, from vignarola (page 50), a Roman spring stew with artichokes, fava beans, peas, and lettuce, to agnello cacio e ova (page 80), a rich lamb dish with eggs and cheese from Abruzzo, and nettle and ricotta gnudi (page 151).
If you don’t yet have the book, or you’d like to gift it to someone who loves Italian food, you can buy it on Amazon with a 35% discount, or even better, support your local indie bookstore (you can find a list of them here on our blog). Thank you!
Here’s also a small collection of recipes you might want to try to celebrate a proper spring feast.
Artichoke and potato tortelli, plum pasta parcels I make often during our cooking classes. I shared the recipe below.
Spring panzanella salad, a recipe we developed for Match Pewter. Whenever I spot the first asparagus and fava beans at the market, I know Spring has truly arrived, and that it’s time for a green panzanella. Now, let me remind you, just once more, that the traditional Tuscan panzanella calls for stale bread soaked in water. But this time I like to bend the rules. For this version, I toast chunks of crusty country bread in a drizzle of olive oil until they’re golden and crisp, almost like little croutons, ready to soak up all the goodness to come. Get the recipe here.
Asparagus and ricotta crespelle. Spring is the season of fresh ricotta, abundant eggs, and slender asparagus. Combine them in an elegant, traditional dish as crespelle for an Easter main course.
Ciambellone with fava beans, pecorino and salami. This is a ciambellone packed with the same ingredients of carefree Spring picnics: fava beans, fresh pecorino and salame. It is a very forgiving and versatile recipe. Serve it as an appetizer with cold cuts and a lemony arugula salad, or slice it for a packed lunch.
Garmugia, the greenest Tuscan soup for spring. Garmugia is one of those recipes that can be made just for a very short period of time, that is when you find fava beans, peas, asparagus and artichokes on the market stalls. Working with these ingredients requires patience, but those minutes spent shelling peas and slicing artichokes can become a form of meditation in the kitchen, a way to embrace the freshness of the new season.
Piselli alla Fiorentina, Florentine-style Fresh Peas. These peas are a side dish that well represents the Florentine love for well-cooked vegetables, stewed over low heat for a long time. This is how you extract all the flavours from vegetables, to create a dish that requires bread to eat it and especially to mop up all the flavorful olive oil left at the bottom of the saucepan.
Tuscan Schiacciata di Pasqua. This is a domed sweet bread, with a glossy, burnished surface and a dense crumb yellow with egg, delicately flavoured with anise seeds and rosolio, a sweet mint liqueur. Its name comes from the Italian word “schiacchiare,” meaning “to break,”as you need to break open many eggs to make it. Get the recipe here.
Zuccotto with strawberry biancomangiare. A spectacular Florentine dessert with a Sicilian twist: a terrazzo-like biancomangiare filling, dotted with strawberries. Elegant, unexpected, and just right for spring. Watch the replay of our cook along here, and get the recipe here.
A Florentine chocolate and semolina tart. Chocolate and semolina are two ingredients that apparently have two completely different lives. Chocolate is the protagonist of the most spectacular desserts: dark, intense, often reserved just for the grown-ups. Semolina, on the other hand, reminds me of childhood, simple food, motherly cuddles. They meet and fall in love in this tart, two different layers, but well-balanced. It has also a homey, familiar character, as every tart made with a shell of shortcrust pastry dough.
What are your own Easter traditions? Have you ever made fresh pasta for the occasion? I’d love to hear about your memories, your meals, and the recipes that make it to your table this time of year. Come and share them in the comments.
And before we jump to the recipe, happy Easter from Tommaso and me. Buona Pasqua!
RECIPE - Artichoke and Potato Tortelli
I first made this recipe during one of the early cooking classes of the season, and it was an instant hit, so much so that even Tommaso asked me to make it again soon. And I did, this time for a very special occasion: when Nicole Gulotta came to visit. We’d known each other online for over a decade, and finally meeting in person was pure joy.
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