Pass the Cassata

I woke up the Saturday before Easter on a mission. My mission was to recreate an old family recipe passed down from my great grandfather. I'm sad to say I never knew him in my life, however in pictures we share a similar Sicilian face with that long nose "I'm blessed with". I am told stories from both sides of my family about how he was a great chef, restaurant owner and talented entertainer. Great Grandpa G could turn heads singing and dancing his way through a night at one of his restaurants, like Bing Crosby meets Frank Sinatra (in my mind). Old charm at its finest.

The family recipe I was determined to conquer is called: Cassata, an Italian style cheesecake.  It's a creamy, cheesy cake with a lot of ricotta and eggs that is probably about a bazillion calories per bite. However, it's one of my Easter Sunday favorites, delicious served cold and pairs well with a spiral ham if you ask me. I just felt like I had to do it. Also recently engaged, I wanted to bring something over to my fiance's family that was special to my own.

Easter for me, like many Italian children was always fun, thanks to the Easter bunny hoax. Flashback to 1990: My sister and I are getting dressed up in matching floral dresses, Mary Jane's and pastel headbands. We dress like its June, but as we walk out into crisp air on our way to Easter mass we step through piles of snow melting on the grass. When we get home we ignore all chocolate and throw down a package of yellow peeps, each.  After we are full of marshmallow, there's dinner and  Cassata was always on my family's table. The table which was adorned in pastel colors, with a fresh lamb butter mold and so much food it's brought out from the kitchen in waves. (Lamb butter examples)

This year (21 years later) Cassata is traveling with me to my fiance's Irish/Portuguese family.  After fighting back a migraine to complete my mission to make this beast of cake and 3 hours later (total) here is what came out of the oven.

Bam! There you go, just like that you follow some simple instructions and you can recreate a recipe your great grandparents made in the 40's. The above is the final product. After tasting a few small bites (I mean slices) I'd say I came pretty darn close to what has been served to me in Easter's past. Maybe Great Grandpa G and I have more in common than a long nose.... I also have a killer singing voice.

Cassata (Easter Cheesecake)

Ingredients for Crust
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 lb. butter
1/2 tsp.cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp. baking powder

Filling:
8 eggs
1 cup sugar
4 lbs. fine ricotta
Juice of 1 lemon
2 ozs. candied citron fruit (I skip this)
2 ozs. chocolate chips, semi sweet
1/4 cup chopped maraschino cherries
1/4 cup cherry juice

Prep Crust:
Mix flour, cinnamon, sugar and baking powder. Cut butter into mix as for pie pastry. Add milk slowly, kneading with hands. Flour hands, lightly knead dough. Refrigerate for at least one hour if possible.

Roll out three-quarters of pastry dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Butter the spring form pan and line with pastry dough, making sure that pastry lies firms against the sides.

Prep filling:
In a large bowl, whip the eggs until frothy. Add sugar, lemon juice, cherry juice, chopped cherries, chocolate chips, and citron, stirring while adding. Add the fine ricotta, continue whipping until thoroughly blended. Pour filling into pan. Roll remaining dough and cut into one-inch strips. Place on top of the filling. Trim edges if needed.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake on lower rack for one hour until firmly set. Cool and serve. This recipe is for a 12-inch spring form pan.

Pastina's Done!

Pastina is what you feed small Italian children to make them grow into strong, pasta loving adults, which literally means "little pasta". These tiny pasta treats can be cooked in soups or served on there own with butter or an egg (my most favorite).  Before my sister and I ever heard of mac n' cheese and well before the microwavable "easy mac" revolution that I experienced throughout college, there was PASTINA. 

Regina is my grandmother's name, our Nonni, the center of my pasta loving family and my middle name.  Regina to me, has also always been my alter hidden Italian ego, before I understood that it was actually pretty cool to appreciate your roots (more on this later).  The name was in fact so powerful that one of my professors in college refused to call me by my first name after she found out I was a REGINA!  Her goal was to bring the vivacious alter ego out in class. Megan (my first name/pretty popular 80's baby name) tried too hard to say what she thought everyone wanted to hear, remained polite and enjoyed staying out of the spotlight. It's unfortunate that it took me so long to appreciate how awesome it really is to be a Regina and break out of the shell a little.  Not only did some professor think it was so great that they needed to address me by it, I also began to realize: this is the name that forever binds me to someone I love and admire.

How do pastina and Regina come together as one? Well, let's go back to the kitchen, specifically Nonni Regina's.  Nonni would watch all of the kids growing up, as most grandmothers do when parents want a break and inevitably have to feed us little brats.  As I envisioned other kids eating chicken fingers, mac n' cheese and hot dogs, we got the Italian fast food: PASTINA. Pastina and butter on most occasions was dished out for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. If we were really lucky an egg got thrown into the mix (think about how essential the egg is to chicken fried rice).

As a side note: growing up I did on occasion eat a Happy Meal and had strong affections for strawberry frosted Pop tarts. What can I say though, certain foods stick out more than others.  Pastina is one of those things that somehow ended up even bigger than the meatball in regard to the most frequently eaten food as a kid. It wasn't about a special occasion or holiday or even Sunday dinner, it was about day to day life.

My sister and I (as well as many others in my family) were born and bred on this teeny-tiny pasta until we were ready for the real stuff (e.g., big pasta). I can not say it is something I eat very often now at all. However, on a cold winter night, a stressful day after work or when I'm sick and in bed, the little blue box gets pulled out. Like magic or a miracle, it can lower my anxiety, warm me up and make me well again. It pulls me back to my center, a warm, safe, familiar place: my Nonni's kitchen. No matter where I end up living or what I end up eating, pastina lives on, a warm, buttery memory, boiled into my brain.

Kick-Off

I grew up in the country of upstate NY, way upstate, the point where the Thruway exits are about an hour apart. Somewhere off that highway is where I grew up, feeding half melted-cherry Popsicles to deer (yup the animal) and stealing pea pods from the farmers who lived next door. My parents let me run around buck naked in the yard and through the garden eating tomatoes like apples, because that was cool to do back then and there was no one to around to watch.  Thank goodness for that.

Food has always been there for me and played as central role in my life since as early as I can remember. Every significant milestone, family gathering and celebration you can count on food taking center stage. I can tie back almost every significant memory in life back to it, thanks to the smells, sights and sounds. The memories make me feel comforted at times, laugh or cry at others. My goal is write all of it down - past, present and future, the good the bad and the ugly. Let me kick it off with a list of my top 3 favorite food memories.

1. Meatballs Cracklin' on Sunday Mornings: Almost every Sunday from the ages of 5-17, the smell of garlic and meat wafts upstairs to my room. Every time the smell met my nose I walked downstairs and took a seat at the kitchen table, finished my homework and let the fumes take over. The fumes take over to the point where I can't take it anymore and then boom, a meatball is ready to eat (finally). Mom always handed one hot one over to me in a paper-towel to try....oh and if I'm awake pre-meatball rolling phase, I'm sent to the garden to pick some parsley (the older I get, the more likely I am sleeping for this part).

2. Sugar Daddy's at Summer Camp: I have the freedom of no parents, no one watching my sugar intake or making sure I drink the organic apple juice. I am 12 and damn skinny, I run everywhere and in this case I run to canteen with the quarters I scratched up, out of the bottom of my bag. It is like freedom and the Sugar Daddy is my ticket. It melts slowly, comes on a stick, gets caught in your teeth for 2 days and tastes like caramelized sugary goodness.

3. Apple Pie's (pre-oven bake) at Nonni's: This one if for all the years of my life. I sit at the counter in my Nonni's kitchen where she pre-heats her 3 ovens. Apples are being sliced quickly by hand and thrown in an industrial sized bowl mixed with sugar and cinnamon. The crust gets worked out with her hands which are paper thin and burned. I drink milk and sneak out some of the cinnamon-sugar apples from the bowl. Sometimes I get limited instructions to wash my hands and help out. Mostly, we talk about life. Sometimes she seems really sad and then I get her talking about her recipes, her life and her loves. I feel special during these moments, as I think she is revealing deep secrets of her heart that only I know.