Sunday 23 March 2008

Easter foods I: Casatiello and Tortano

We make a very tasty food called in our lingo "casatiello" or "tortano", it is a ring shaped salt pie, heavily filled with pieces of salami, boiled eggs, sheep milk cheese and bacon.
It is a delicious salt pie but I suppose you'll get fat easily if you eat it every day because its dough is based on lard !!
The rumour says its name comes from the word "caso", which means in our lingo "cheese" that you can find in a huge amount in it.

This type of food carries out different Easter symbols, indeed among its ingredients there are sheep milk cheese and eggs, the first is made of sheep milk as its name suggests but the sheep milk also is the primary nutriment of lamb which is an Easter sign at least for Catholics.
The eggs are the symbol of birth, and Jesus after his death is born again.
In the end, there is the shape, I said like a ring because the ring should remind us of the torn crown which tied Jesus' head.
Between casatiello and tortano there is a delicious difference the first has some eggs upon it covered with a cross (as you can see in the picture) made of the same pie's dough, these crosses reminde again of Jesus' cross.

Next time I'm going to speak about the casatiello counter part : Pastiera

Thanks to my dear Zsofia for correcting me

1 comment:

TopGun said...

Another good post.
Well done fellow!

You are accomplishing your mission of "out spreding" our tradition in the web ;)

 

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