Among palm fronds and delicatessen.
Like all religious holidays, Easter in Campania is a very important event that involves, from a week earlier, not only the whole family but also the entire religious communities of different neighborhoods.
A religious festival that is celebrated also in the kitchen with a range of cuisine to be turning heads… and fill your tummy!
The Easter religious celebration begins on the Sunday before, known as Palm Sunday. Each father of the family take a palm frond blessed by the priest during the ceremony and a small bottle of holy water, to bring at home.
The week before Easter is marked by a series of religious events, prayers, confessions and fittings, while the day of Holy Friday (on this day is absolutely forbidden to eat meat) each parish organizes the Via Crucis, an emotional and very impressive moment which traces the passion and death of Jesus Christ. The solemn mass on Saturday night and Sunday morning celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.
After the function the families get together for lunch to feast with an impressive array of dining specialties but, before to eat, the oldest person of the family dips the blessed palm in the holy water and then as in a ritual, shaking it, blesses all present.
What are the delicatessen of Easter in Campania?
Let’s start with the undisputed queen of the Easter dinner: the rustic pie, better known as Casatiello or Tortano. It is a mixture of flour, yeast, lard, olive oil and warm water with the addition of salami, ham and various types of cheese and eggs. After many hours of leavening is baked in the oven (wide spreading through the house an inviting scent) and then eaten warm and fragrant, an experience that many call ‘paradisiac taste’.
Among other dishes there are tagliatelle cooked in the lamb sauce, the ricotta salata served with salami and boiled artichokes, and an endless array of side dishes of vegetables.
And then there is the Pastiera, the typical Easter cake, loved almost as much as the famous chocolate eggs. It is a cake made of puff pastry, sweet ricotta, candied fruit and orange essence, a real treat to eat strictly hot, maybe while sipping a glass of Limoncello.
So you just have to come to test and live the emotional and food experiences that this land, joyful and friendly, reserve in this time of the year.
