Still haven’t decided upon your Easter Pie?
Well, if you’re interested in trying a pie traditionally served around Easter in Southern Italy, I spotted this delicious looking Neapolitan Wheat Pie on the Chicago Tribune’s food section.
The recipe comes from Nick Malgieri’s book “The Modern Baker”. A key ingredient in this decadent pie is wheat berries:
“In much of Italy, wheat is a potent symbol surviving from pre-Christian springtime rites that has become indissolubly linked with Easter. It used to be a widespread custom to sprout some wheat berries in a dark closet at the beginning of Lent. Forty days later at Easter, the thin, almost-white plants would be used as an Easter Sunday table decoration. I remember a couple of pots of those wheat plants decorating the Easter Sunday altar in our all-Italian parish church more than 50 years ago.
So it should come as no surprise that a pie filled with wheat berries is an almost obligatory part of the Easter menu in most of southern Italy. Though the official name of this pie is pastiera Napoletana, many Italian Americans also refer to it as pizza di grano — meaning grain or wheat pie. This classic Neapolitan pastry has a sweet crust filled with ricotta, pastry cream and cooked wheat berries, and is scented with orange flower water.”
Source: Chicago Tribune, Nick Malgieri: Crust Full of Tradition
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