Happy Easter to Everyone!
I set out an Easter Egg hunt yesterday and learned a very valuable lesson….If you hide chocolate eggs for a 2 year old to find, be prepared to have him EAT ALL THE EGGS. Needless to say, the sugar-rush eventually subsided and we got ready for an Easter lunch with my husband’s family.
We went to a little place that my husband goes to daily for lunch with his family in the small town of Recovato close to Modena. During the week you can eat a Primo Piatto (meaning first dish, usually a pasta or lasagna), a Secondo Piatto (The second dish, usually a meat dish like a platter of grilled meat or roasted meat), a Contorno (a side dish, usually a grilled or baked vegetable) with water, wine and espresso for 13 euro!!
My son lives off of tortellini and ate an adult’s sized portion. Everyone was pretty shocked since he’s so skinny and isn’t much of an eater, but put something he likes down in front of him and watch it disappear!
If you follow my Facebook Page you know that a few weeks ago I shaved my son’s head!!!! Like, with a razor! It is FINALLY growing back and you can see at least the color of some hair. I’ve been trying to avoid seeing my husband’s grandmother (pictured above) at all costs until he got some hair back, since she like kids with longer hair! Let’s just say, I didn’t want her to go into shock, considering right after I shaved his head it actually GLEAMED from the light reflecting off it.
After out Easter lunch feast we went for ice cream and to the park with my husband’s parents and grandmother. If you’d like to see what I wore up close I did another post about the look here.
La Colomba
We started the day off with a piece of a “Colomba”. It is tradition in Italy to give and receive a specific pastry at “Pasqua” (Easter) called a “Colomba”, it is similar to a Panettone or Pandora.
If you’ve never tasted a Colomba or Panettone before it is unlike any other “cake” in the world. Both have very distinctive aromas and can be made with or without candied fruit, chocolate, almonds and sugar crystals on top. The ingredients are butter, water, eggs, flour and of course natural yeast.
Colomba is the Italian word for Dove, and the form of the cake resembles a dove with outspread wings. Actually, in Italy there are two “official” Easter desserts that are refereed to as “Colomba”. The dove shaped buttery cake from the Lombardia region (above), invented by the famous company Motta in the 1900s and the antique Sicilian “Palummeddi”.
The Palummeddi
My mother was born in Sicilily and when she and my grandparents immigrated to Canada she had to translate for both of my grandparents, who could only speak Sicilian, for their entire lives!!
In fact, I never learned how to speak Italian growing up becasue my family could only speak dialect. Dialects, in Italy, are often nothing at all like Italian. It is important to remember that in a country that was officially United just 150 years ago, the territories, cultures, languages and traditions remained very much distinct from region to region.
In fact the Sicilian “dialect” is not considered a dialect at all but a completely separate language. When I was growing up, my grandmother would make “Palummeddi” at Easter. Another word for dove in Italian is Paloma or “Paluma” in Sicilian, and these Palummeddi were baked breads that usually incorporated the form of a basket or dove and hard-boiled eggs.
Image from Wikipedia
Beautiful to look at and complicated to make, my sisters and I would NEVER be tempted to eat the bread with the hardboiled eggs!!
It just wasn’t appealing! But now, that I no longer have my grandmother, I wish I could go back in time and eat all of the special desserts she used to make like sweet rice with saffron and her Easter Palummeddi.
I guess the lesson here is, when I become a grandmother and my grandkids refuse to eat the yummy things I make because they look strange (like my son who refuses to eat the Parmigiana di Melanzane that I made from scratch that takes me HOURS to prepare), I just have to take a deep breath and remember….kids are dumb!
You don’t want to eat it, fine don’t eat it, more for me, go and eat your stupid fish sticks!
Pasticceria Cova, Via Montenapoleone 8, Milano
The Colomba that we were given for this Easter is from the historic Milanese bakery Cova. Cova is an institution in Italy and when I was living in Milan I would go in just to look at all of the amazing panettone they make at Christmas time!
They rigorously follow the original and antique recipes for all of their products. Rest assured that little has changed in the quality of their products since they opened 197 years ago! In fact their Milanese “Colomba di Pasqua” (Easter Dove Cake) is true to its origins from the 1800s, when it was offered as a gift to Alboino, the King of the Longobards!
Cova openend in 1817 beside the famous “La Scala” theater in Milan, becoming a hub for the Milanese aristocracy to meet after attending Operas and theater performances to discuss the show and enjoy pastries of the same calibre.
This week, I’ll be sharing what I wore to the historic Theatre of Modena. YES, I actually took a two-year old to see a theater performance and he was pretty well-behaved. Not perfect….but good enough!
Hope you all had a lovely Easter and that you ate your grandmothers specialty dishes!! Feel free to tell me all about them!