Angel A Cuisine: Italian Easter Pie

Italian Easter Pie! I have to admit that I am new to this wonderful culinary creation. Easter was a big family celebration in my ginormous Catholic family but our feast tended towards the Irish/German/Polish cuisine, in fact it still does as I wipe away drool thinking of grilled sauerkraut perogis.

But what's wonderful about this Italian Easter Pie is that it is served at room temperature in customized slices. A super easy bite from brunch through dinner. Make ahead dish to allow more time with family & friends enjoying a preassembled lunch. I got my original inspiration from Cook's Country but then I quickly realized I didn't like a bunch of the ingredients & then others were too hard to find. I made 2 different varieties, one vegetarian & other for my carnivores. The beauty is it is totally adaptable to individual tastes.

I am so lucky to have friends with chickens! Freshly gathered eggs this morning allowed me to make 4 of these pies & all great pie starts with a great crust. Here is a pictorial presentation of our Italian Easter Pie Dough:

6 Tablespoons of each unsalted butter & shortening give this dough the flakiness & the flavor we crave.

Pie dough is super easy... flour, eggs, salt, fat, & a touch of water! Super fresh ingredients that are COLD! make the best crusts. This is why I use my food processor so the warmth of my hands has as little contact with the dough as possible.

I have recently stopped measuring dry ingredients by volume & now prefer to measure it by weight, 15oz of flour or 3 cups. Not only is it more accurate but it is super easy... especially if you are cooking in large quantities. I like to have everything prepped before I begin... flour measured & a bit over a teaspoon of salt are pulsed in the processor.

3 fresh eggs are whisked with 3 Tablespoons of ice cold water.

Our chilled cubes of butter & shortening are added to the food processor & pulsed until small pebbles of flour coated fat are created.

Whisked eggs are added!

This is pulsed until a dough forms.

& my hands are still clean!

or at least they were until now. Knead the dough until it just forms a ball. Flaky crust depends on us touching the dough as little as possible so that the fat remains in little tiny floured coated pockets. So maybe 20 turns on a well floured surface.

This dough is then divided into 2 pieces... the first is roughly 2/3 & the remaining 1/3. Shape into disks, wrap in plastic, & put in the refrigerator... I like to do this a day ahead & leave it in there over night, but an hour will do.

The next time you see your dough, you will notice white sesame seed shaped pieces of fat sprinkled throughout your dough... these will eventually become the flakes in the dough.

Now onto your fillings... I did 2

Vegetarian

Carnivorous

But both contained CHEESE!

1pound fresh ricotta

4 ounces Pecorino Romano

2 eggs

1 teaspoon black pepper

fresh parsley

Stir until combined.

Finally what ever ingredients make you happy... this is what I used

fire roasted peppers

trimmed into flat sheets

I sautéed mushrooms for the veggie pie. Make sure you give your fungi enough room in the pan to brown up. An over crowded pan leads to mushy mushrooms.

In the same pan I fried up some broccoli, where I later wilted spinach & garlic

I had an acorn squash so I roasted it up... next time I think I will use butternut simply for the bright orange color to be added to the pie. Like I said, anything goes.

Now the creation process from rolling the dough into a 9" cake pan to shingles of provolone & layered toppings thinking of flavor & what the profile appearance of each wedge is going to look like on a plate.