By Alberto Amore
Christmas and thanksgiving are known for their big family feasts with both Christian and non religious families gathering together to dine with turkeys, potatoes and salads, but these gatherings pale in comparison to an Italian Easter.
While Anglo-Saxon parents carefully place small, store bought easter eggs around the backyard and exchange a branded grocery store egg with each member of the family, Italian families have had their heads buried in ovens for days on end producing a very purposeful and regimented period of family famine followed by indulgent, all consuming all encompassing feasting. Chocolate is on the margins where whole foods, natural ingredients and recipes lasting generations sometimes to the Romans are shared and enjoyed by families connected by blood but fused by food.
The patterns are similar, there is fasting, usually for the forty days of lent, certain foods and certain treats are consumed on certain days of the Holy weeks. Baccala, an air dried fish, usually cod, in Napoli is a salt cured fish in Calabria. It has a shelf life of several years and is consumed on ‘Venerdi Sante’ or ‘Holy Friday’ or ‘Good Friday’ as an act of sacrifice for crucified God.
All throughout Italy there are countless rituals, processions, traditions, people marching with torches and bare-feet along kilometres of stone streets. In my home village, dozens of people line the streets and play a parochial wooden percussion instrument in a thunderous demonstration support for the passing parade. The instruments, like the parade only arise once a year. [Read more…]