Mmm. Good work everyone. The Feaster returned this year, after a few years' hiatus. There was a USA theme to the food: here's what we ate. Maple syrup and paprika-flavoured meatballs Cheerios and tomato sauce Corn cobs Buffalo wings Potato casserole Cornbread Barbecued pork ribs Coleslaw Potato salad Stuffed tomatoes Ambrosia salad Brownies Easter eggs
Another beautiful article by Christopher Pearson of The Australian.
Holy tortellini and other papal repasts
April 11, 2009
I have found Lent more of a trial than usual this year. Combining normal doses of medications for late-onset diabetes with any attempt at fasting can play merry hell with your blood sugar and mood. To make matters worse, this is the second year in a row that old friends have insisted on getting married in Holy Week and the wedding receptions have clashed with mandatory liturgies.
Last time I found myself singing along to the strains of Cat Stevens's "Morning has broken/Like the first morning" at a civil ceremony in a garden on the afternoon of Good Friday.
This year on Maundy Thursday I might have ended up at an early evening degustation banquet, rather than the mass of the Lord's Supper, and regretfully declined. So instead I stuck to the traditional, quite appetising mainstay of beans and lentil soup, saving up the hot cross buns until Friday. I've tried a number of recipes based on baccala, an Italian-style salt cod that is another Good Friday dish. However, in my experience, no matter how long you soak it or try to disguise the strong flavour with a sauce, it always tastes not just penitential but downright nasty, so I'm going to give it a miss.
Understandably, my thoughts have tended to anticipate the weeks of solemn feasting that begin tomorrow. What's more, a playful friend has given me a book called Buon Appetito, Your Holiness: The Secrets of the Papal Table (Mariangela Rinaldi and Mariangela Vicini, Pan). A lot of its recipes were designed for elderly men with bad teeth and digestive troubles: bread soups, polenta and pasta, easily swallowed stews and egg dishes.
But the medieval and Renaissance popes were often a different story, men with raging appetites who knew how to keep a princely table. Leo X was a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, best remembered for the remark: "Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it!" He reigned from 1513 to 1521 and, for all his love of luxury and entertainment, was also scrupulous about fasting and his liturgical duties. He was a Renaissance patron of the arts and letters, with definite ideas about the style befitting a papal court.
In a feast to celebrate his family's elevation to the Roman patriciate, for example, he gave a feast to feed 3000 people, including about 600 noble guests. The latter group unfolded their napkins to discover that they contained little birds that hopped about the tables "to the delight of all", according to a contemporary diarist, while pages brought them silver ewers of rosewater so they could wash their hands.
Of the 25 Lucullan courses, three in particular stand out.
First there were dishes of sugared capons baked in a casing of gold leaf. Then followed "vessels with triumphant hoops and gilded balls in the middle, from which rose gold banderols enclosing various birds which, when the balls were opened, did as their feathered brethren had done earlier". (The release of clouds of small birds that in ordinary circumstances would have been eaten was a gesture of munificence, a grander version of the "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" that began to sing when it was opened.) Next came eight dishes of mature peacocks, baked and then dressed again in their skins and feathers, standing as if alive.
Excesses aside, there is a French dish still in the contemporary canon that is named after Leo X. It calls for a young chicken weighing less than 2kg, the breast larded with truffle slices and 100g of the best ham, gently browned in butter and then poached in madeira and half a glass of cognac, topped up with stock as required. A handful of finely chopped mushrooms is added to the liquid at the last minute and the chicken is served on a slice of bread fried in butter. By way of accompaniment, small macaroni pasta is cooked in chicken stock, coated in grated parmesan to taste and served in a white sauce. It sounds rich but not overpowering and I've a good mind to try my hand at making it during the Easter octave, which the Orthodox call "bright week".
Rodrigo Borgia reigned disgracefully as Alexander VI from 1492 to 1503. He is best known for the Torre Borgia (a specially designed place of torture with chambers decorated by Pinturicchio), for his illegitimate offspring, for his frequent reliance on poisons and the deployment of hired assassins.
Despite all that, he was said to observe seasonal fasts strictly and seen to eat in moderation, at least in public, relying on chaste salads, clear fish soups and pasta with chickpeas. Afterwards, in private, he tended to gorge himself on desserts and a kind of spiced bread called panpepato.
He was very fond of parties, especially family get-togethers with his appalling children, and kept a table famous for its capon pies, eel dishes and exotic sauces to accompany baked and boiled meats. When disposed to remind his guests of their mortality, he'd have them served pheasant in dishes made from human skulls. The Florentine banker Strozzi was later to adopt the pheasant-in-skull theme and other memento mori courses for a black carnival dinner. It included sausages protruding from thigh bones and skeletons hung from black-draped walls with candles in their eye sockets.
One recipe from Rome in Alexander's pontificate that is still popular is a simple sauce for game that works well with grilled quail. Take 500g of wild blackberries and 200g of very finely chopped almonds. Mash together and add a pinch of dried ginger and two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Strain through fine muslin and serve warm.
Another libertine pope of the Renaissance was Alessandro Farnese, who took the name Paul III. His nickname in Rome was della Gonella, the skirt-chaser. He sired many illegitimate children and engaged in nepotism on a grand scale. He's remembered for the masquerades, licentious plays, spectacles and extravagant feasts that characterised his reign. His estates supplied him with notable delicacies: sweet oranges from Capodimonte; cherries from Pianiano; wild boar, deer and hare from Castro; pigeons and pheasant from the island of Bisentina; and the eels for which Lake Bolsena is famous.
One measure of his fondness for the pleasures of the table is that he employed two famous cooks, Giovanni de Rosselli and then Bartolomeo Scappi, and a sommelier called Sante Lancerio, who kept extensive records of what appeared on the papal table. Although Paul III is said to have died of indigestion, the recipe most often associated with him is quite refined. It is a dish of tortellini stuffed with equal quantities of chicken meat, simmered in stock and finely chopped, fresh mushrooms and chicken livers, chopped and briefly fried in butter. The filling is mixed with pepper and a hint of nutmeg, then encased in the pasta and boiled in a good chicken stock for 12minutes.
Another, earlier pope with whom the authors have a lot of fun is Simon de Brion, who reigned briefly as Martin IV from 1281 to 1285. They note that Dante consigned him to purgatory because of his passion for eels cooked in an astringent white wine from the Lazio district. Jacopo della Lana says: "He was most depraved in gluttony and other food-inspired greed, to the point that he had eels brought from Lake Bolsena which he put to 'drown' in vernaccia wine, then had them roasted and ate. So fond was he of this morsel that he kept wanting them brought up to (a tank) in his room."
When not slavishly defending the interests of his patron, Charles of Anjou, his main preoccupation was leisurely gourmandising and his brief pontificate is generally regarded as a disaster for the church.
Having learned nothing from the example of Henry I of England, who had died 150 years previously from "a surfeit of lampreys", Martin IV met the same salutary end, eating himself to death on his favourite dish.
Mum made this breakfast for us, on the Easter long weekend. She said it was just like the breakfasts she used to have in Germany, when she travelled there in her 30s. There was tomato and ham off the bone, caraway-spiced Gouda and a strong Camembert, avocado and onion, smoked salmon and untoasted chewy white bread. There were also plums and black grapes.
Sort of a hybrid Hispano-Franco-Germanic breakfast, really, but it was just so delicious. I love her green ribbed teapot and the old-school '70s mugs. 
I have a collection of Easter eggs tht I have decorated over the years. I blow the insides of the eggs out through a tiny hole and then paint the shells. I like to display them in a tall vase on my Easter table.
This year the vase also contains some stuffed fabric eggs that I made a couple of months ago. They're not great, and I have next to no skill with a needle and thread, but I like them anyway. 
Notice the jugful of chocolate eggs? Porkface won them in a competition: guess-how-many-eggs-in-the-jar. He used some mathematical formula to work out the exact number. I said it was cheating, but I guess if you know how to win, you do it.
Plus the eggs do look nice and shiny.
There's also two stems of oriental lilies. They smell just perfect. 
Here's a great post from the New York Times about Easter in Italy, traditions and food. This is the kind of Easter information I really like, as opposed to plastic cartoon bunnies and chickens.
On Easter, Symbolism And the Exuberance of Spring
By NANCY HARMON JENKINS
Published: April 4, 2007
THROUGHOUT rural Italy, the first thing many families eat on Easter morning is a giant frittata made from uova benedetta, eggs blessed on the day before Easter, when the village priest goes around giving each farmhouse a benediction. One Easter, on a farm outside the old Samnite town of Venafro in Molise, I shared a 40-egg frittata made by the farmer's wife. It wasn't the best frittata I ever had, but it surely was the holiest.
As the dull winter landscape of the Mediterranean breaks into fresh green life, the exuberance of holiday feasting neatly matches the exuberance of nature. The magic and mystery of Easter and Passover are firmly grounded in the realities of a Mediterranean springtime. The artichokes, asparagus, young fava beans and fresh green peas on the Easter table reflect that, as do the eggs that have piled up, uneaten throughout Lent, in the family larder.
Even for those who no longer observe the traditional 40-day fast, Holy Week brings a palpable sense of anticipation. This Sunday, unusually, Western and Orthodox Easter celebrations fall on the same day, while Passover is observed throughout Holy Week and Easter weekend.
If Passover celebrates the resurrection of a people from the death of slavery in Egypt, Easter affirms the resurrection of individual souls.
But both reflect ancient beliefs, lodged deep in the Mediterranean psyche, about the resurrection of the natural world after winter's death. (It is one reason they are movable feasts set by an agricultural calendar following the moon and the solstice rather than by a man-made date.) Scratch the surface of a Greek or Italian Easter menu and you will find foods whose close ties to springtime celebrations date back before Christianity.
Take the ubiquitous egg, universal symbol of rebirth: Italian parents and grandparents outdo one another to find the largest and most expensive chocolate eggs, the most elaborately decorated, with the most costly ''sorprese,'' little gifts concealed inside. (They used to be plastic baubles, but now, I am told, they might be a pair of gold earrings or even the keys to a new car.)
More prosaically, each region, each town, has its own distinctive bread, the staff of everyday life enriched with noble ingredients for the holiday. In the Tuscan village where I spend a part of each year it is a humble ciacia (CHA-cha, a contraction of focaccia), a brioche-like dough with chunks of pecorino cheese or pancetta liberally distributed through it. In other parts of Italy it may be a sweet dough with bits of chocolate or candied citrus peel, often with colored hard-boiled eggs embedded in the top.
The best-known Italian Easter bread is never, to my knowledge, made at home: la colomba, the dove, an elaborate confection, garnished with egg whites and almonds, in the shape of a bird with its wings spread wide, is in every supermarket, highway rest stop, bakery and fancy pastry shop throughout Italy. (Most Italian neighborhood shops in the United States have imported, commercially made colombe; for a more artisanal variety, look in Italian-style bakeries like Sullivan Street Bakery, 533 West 47th Street, (212) 265-5580.)
The dove, of course, confirmed Noah's covenant with the Lord. It is also the bird of peace for Christians. Or is it perhaps symbolic of Aphrodite, whose lover Adonis also died and was restored to new life? Like so much that has to do with Easter, the answer may well be all of the above.
In countless southern Italian towns, sweet fragrances of vanilla, cinnamon and orange blossoms mixed with rich, buttery ricotta drift from kitchen windows open to the spring breezes. Home cooks and chefs simmer peeled wheat in milk, sugar and aromatics, the first step in the lengthy preparations for pastiera di grano, the iconic Easter sweet.
Pastiera di grano -- literally grain pie -- also grew out of an excess of eggs along with ricotta made from the milk of newly freshened ewes. But it harks directly back to propitiatory offerings made in ancient, and not so ancient, times to insure a safe harvest. Traditionally the grano, or wheat, comes from an antique strain of durum wheat that must be peeled, like pearled barley, of an indigestible outer pellicle.
Peeled wheat, called grano pestato or grano pellato, and sometimes just grano per pastiera, is often available in Italian specialty shops, like Di Palo Fine Foods, 200 Grand Street (Mott Street), (212) 226-1033. Modern cooks unable to find proper grano can also substitute farro, another durum wheat variety that is also peeled. (A recipe for the pie can be found at nytimes.com/dining.)
In Greece and some parts of Italy, women still set bowls of wheat or lentils to sprout in darkness, then bring them into the light, often right into church, on the Thursday before Easter. The symbolism is obvious, but it is less well known that this tradition goes directly back to what in ancient Greece were called gardens of Adonis, bowls of wheat grains sprouted by women who followed the cult of Aphrodite's dead lover.
The sumptuous profusions of Easter lasagnas are like proclamations of abundance after the dearth of the Lenten fast. Called simply pasta al forno, oven-baked pasta, in central Italy, in the south it is known as lasagna ripiena, stuffed lasagna, and in dialect sagne chine (ZAHN-yeh KEE-neh). In my part of eastern Tuscany my neighbors bake their Easter pasta in the outside bread oven, built into the house wall, and the oven's smoky wood fire lends fragrance and flavor to the dish.
Thickly layered with meats and sausages and strewn with tiny meatballs, grated and sliced cheeses, wild spring vegetables (pencil-thin asparagus and hop shoots) and garden-grown ones (artichokes and peas), these sumptuous constructions are like gastronomic fortresses against the restraint of the everyday.
Above all, though, Easter in the Mediterranean is unimaginable without lamb at the center of the feast. Often spit-roasted or braised in a wood-fired oven, surrounded by many of those seasonal first fruits, lamb, in a sense, is what Easter is all about, the Agnus Dei, the lamb of God, the sacrificial offering of the first-born in the shepherd's flock, a practice as old as the first shepherd, Abel, whose offering was more pleasing to the Lord than Cain's tiresome vegetables.
In Greece, kokoretsi, the lamb's tender innards -- liver, heart and kidneys -- are threaded on spits and grilled over an open fire, just as Homeric heroes did with sacrificial offerings, and on Easter Eve they are turned into the magnificent soup called mageiritsa that finally breaks the Lenten fast. Flavored with dill or wild fennel greens, thickened with avgolemono, eggs beaten with fresh lemon juice, this is a soup to wake the dead and, alas, quite impossible to prepare in the United States, where there is almost no access to baby lamb, let alone to its innards or to wild fennel greens.
But a southern Italian lamb dish made with chunks of lamb shoulder has a similar richness. A fricasse of lamb with cheese and eggs, garnished with fresh peas or fava beans, its sauce thickened with eggs and flavored with lemon, is traditionally made for Easter Monday. Known as Pasquetta, or Little Easter, it's another example of Italian exuberance, an official national holiday when city families decamp to the countryside to lunch al fresco on leftovers of the Sunday feast, happily extending the celebrations of Easter just a little further into the everyday world.
Neapolitan Easter Fricassee of Lamb
Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 pounds boned lamb shoulder or leg, in about 2-inch pieces, rinsed and well dried
4 medium onions, halved and very thinly sliced
1 cup dry white wine
2 1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed
3 large eggs
1 cup grated caciocavallo, Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup coarsely chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley leaves
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lemon slices or quarters, for garnish.
1. Place deep, wide casserole over medium-high heat, and add oil. Brown lamb in batches, transferring to shallow bowl when done. Stir onions into pan, adding juices from bowl. Cover, and reduce heat to low. Cook until onions almost melt, turning golden but not brown, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Add a little water if onions begin to brown.
2. Add lamb and 1/2 cup of wine. Cook uncovered over very low heat until wine is nearly evaporated, about 45 minutes. Add remaining wine, peas, and 1/2 cup of water. Continue cooking uncovered over low heat until peas are very tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Transfer lamb, onions and peas to a warm serving platter, and set aside in a warm place.
3. Place casserole over very low heat so juices barely simmer. Whisk eggs in a bowl and add cheese. Whisk ladles of hot pan juices into eggs until mixture is quite warm, then pour into casserole, whisking continually. Whisk over very low heat until thick enough to coat a spoon. Do not boil or eggs will curdle; if sauce nears a boil, remove from heat and whisk to cool as rapidly as possible.
4. Remove sauce from heat and whisk in parsley and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Spoon sauce over lamb and peas, garnish with lemon slices, and serve immediately. Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
Rich Baked Easter Pasta (Sagne Chine)
Time: 2 hours
1 1/2 lemons
3 large artichokes
1/2 pound fresh pork sausage (hot or sweet or a mix), skins removed
1 1/2 cups freshly grated aged pecorino, caciocavallo, or Parmesan cheese
4 large eggs, 1 raw and 3 hard-boiled, peeled and sliced into wedges
Freshly ground black pepper 1/2 cup unseasoned bread crumbs, or as needed
1/2 cup flour, or as needed
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus additional as needed
1/2 pound lean pork, diced small
2 cups plain tomato sauce
1/4 cup finely minced fresh basil
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or hot pepper flakes to taste
2 celery stalks, including leaves, minced
1 medium yellow onion, minced
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms (wild, oyster or shiitake), cleaned and sliced
1/4 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
2 bay leaves
2 cups frozen peas, thawed
Salt
1 pound fresh or dried lasagna
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced.
1. Squeeze juice of 1 lemon into bowl of water, and set aside. Cut top third off each artichoke, and pull off all the tough outer leaves. Trim stem, halve artichoke, and scrape out thorny center in each half. Rub cut surfaces with lemon half and drop artichokes into bowl of lemon water. Reserve lemon half.
2. Combine sausage, 1/2 cup grated cheese, raw egg and plenty of pepper in bowl. Mix very well and shape into 20 to 24 meatballs about11/2 inches in diameter. If mixture is too soft, mix in up to 1/2 cup bread crumbs.
3. Spread flour on plate and lightly coat meatballs. Place small saucepan over medium heat and heat 3/4 cup of oil. Brown meatballs in batches on all sides, and drain on paper towels. Discard all but 2 tablespoons of oil. Return to medium heat and add pork. Brown on all sides, remove, and set aside.
4. Heat tomato sauce in small saucepan until simmering. Stir in basil and cayenne pepper to taste. Set aside and keep warm. In clean skillet, combine celery, onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Place over medium-low heat and sauté until very soft. Stir in mushrooms and parsley. Drain artichoke halves and cut each into 4 to 6 pieces. Add to pan with bay leaves and 1/4 cup water; mix well. Cover and simmer until artichokes are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in peas and juice of lemon half.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rub olive oil on bottom and sides of a 10-inch-by-13-inch baking dish. Bring 6 quarts of lightly salted water to a rolling boil. Cut fresh lasagna into strips that will fit into three layers in the dish, and parboil 11/2 minutes to soften but not fully cook. If using dried lasagna, cook about 4 minutes to soften but not cook. Drain on kitchen towels.
6. Line bottom of the baking dish with lasagna. Spread one-third of sauce over pasta, then spread it with half the meatballs, half the pork, half the vegetables and half the eggs. On top distribute a third of mozzarella slices and a third of remaining grated cheese. Cover with another layer of lasagna and half of remaining sauce. Spread with remaining meatballs, pork, vegetables and eggs. On top distribute half of remaining mozzarella and half of remaining grated cheese.
7. Cover with a final layer of lasagna and remaining sauce. Distribute remaining mozzarella and remaining grated cheese. Drizzle with about 2 tablespoons olive oil. Bake until top is golden brown, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest for 10 minutes, then serve.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
They are open 24 hours in the week leading up to Easter. If you haven't been, they're on Nudgee Rd, not far from the Sandgate Rd intersection at the airport roundabout.
A packet of fairy floss, some sherbet candies shaped like little chicks, ducks and rabbits, a chocolate hen. 
Some PNG coffee from Basil's (a local supplier), an Old Gold rabbit for the neighbours, some lavender-flavoured sprinkles and sparklers for future cupcake excitement. 
I love how the rabbit's face is all screwed up, in happiness and Easter joy, or possibly pain or constipation. What a great rabbit design, and one that can be enjoyed on many levels: its chocolatey taste, its bizarre face, its huge size and so on. 
So, what do you think? I made about 35 of these little babies to take to work today. They were the toast of the town, if I may be so immodest. 
Looking at these pictures really makes me deeply happy on so many levels. I love the fact that I made cakes for others, and I love seeing the looks on their faces and the happy childlike surprise that grown adults have when they recieve a cupcake unexpectedly. I love doing something special and seasonal at Easter, even though this wasn't my original idea (I wanted to have snow-white lemony icing and to make scarlet mini eggs out of fondant to sit on top, like the beautiful Russian red eggs and the Jewish Easter traditions.) I love the roundness and smoothness of the eggs, like beach pebbles. I love the clear soft colours and the ramshackle messiness of the icing. 
It's true. Those foods that you enjoy, but secretly disapprove of. Foods that you would gasp at if anyone suggested them. Foods that are so uncool and so unfashionable or unhealthy that you would never willingly admit to liking them. Embarrassing food.
On the eve of Good Friday, a day of food denial, why not indulge ourselves with stories of those foods you hate to love...
She also made some new cushions for the chairs: a life out in the sun and salt air does not a happy cushion make.
This afternoon we enjoyed an Easter Monday afternoon tea party: a few friends, a sunny breezy afternoon and lots of sweet treats!
(Who brought beer to a tea party?!? Typical Aussie boys...!) 
