As a nation state, Italy has emerged only in 1871. Until then the country was politically divided into a large number of independant cities, provinces and islands. The currently available evidences point out to a dominant Etruscan, Greek and Roman cultural influence on today's Italians.
I tried to post earlier, but it didn't go through. Hope this one does.
How do you make rice pie and sausage pie? We use rectangle baking pans with no crust at all. The recipes come down from my great great grandmother. I'm wondering if our (apparently) unusual way is a regional thing, a village thing, or a family thing.
My mother and I pulled out the Easter pies and bread recipes this morning. Later, my friend and I were discussing the baking differences between his sausage and rice pies and mine. That reminded me of THIS thread that I started four years ago (and nobody responded to). Lol.
For our sausage pie, we put three different cheeses, eggs, ham, pepperoni, and sausage, very thick, no crust, in a large rectangle baking dish. We cut it in squares and eat it with our hands. Lol.
Our rice pie is made in a similar way, loaded, no crust, very thick, highly flavored, and we cut it in squares.
Everyone in my area makes sausage and rice pie as a traditional pie. Their sausage pie isn't loaded like ours. It's thin, only cheese and sausage, with a top and bottom crust. Their rice pie is thin, crusted top and bottom, and mildly flavored. Both are baked in round pie plates and cut and served like regular pieces of pie.
We even make Easter bread differently than others around here. But I'll leave that topic for another time. Lol.
My mother, my aunt, and I make our loaded, no-crust Easter pies like my grandmother, great grandmother, and great great grandmother did.
So how do you make your Easter pies? And what province are you (or your ancestors) from?
It's said Italy was a country of Saints, poets and navigators. There's no more trace of the poets and navigators but, fortunately, there are traces of the Saints. All the Italian towns are voted to a Saint and one of these is San Gennaro, well-known for his miracle. Who was San Gennaro? San Gennaro ...
