Ask Chef Walter: Torta Pasqualina – Taste of the Liguria Region for your Easter Table – Walter Potenza

by Chef Walter Potenza, contributing writer

Friends:

Happy Easter!

So, I’m in my kitchen, which is currently covered in flour. People have been eating eggs to celebrate spring for a long time—ancient Egyptians, Persians, Romans, all of them saw eggs as life and fertility, part of their spring festivals. That idea was stuck. There’s that old Latin proverb, omne vivum ex ovo: all life comes from an egg.

A note on the Torta Pasqualina

In Ligurian cooking, vegetable pies are everywhere at Easter. Pasqua is Italian for Easter. Renaissance cookbooks are full of these pies. The original torta Pasqualina used 33 paper-thin pastry layers—not random. Those layers are for the years of Christ.

Local mothers and grandmothers made the dough with just Ligurian water, flour, salt, and olive oil. These days, it’s usually more like ten layers, rolled thin, no eggs in the dough. The filling uses Prescinseua, a soft cheese that’s somewhere between yogurt and ricotta. If you’re not in Liguria (I’m not), ricotta is what you use as a substitute. Also, in there: chard or artichokes, marjoram, and whole eggs—again, that symbol of life, spring, the whole triumph over death thing.

Torta Pasqualina

Serves 6

Pastry

8 cups all-purpose flour

4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

½ tsp salt

Lukewarm water

Filling

3.3 lbs. chard, ribs removed

¾ cup plus 1 tbsp grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, divided

1 tbsp chopped fresh marjoram

1.1 lb. Prescinseua cheese (or ricotta)

2 tbsp all-purpose flour

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

12 organic eggs

8 tbsp butter, melted

Salt and black pepper to taste

Vegetable oil for greasing the pan and brushing the sheets

Procedure

Put the flour in a bowl. Add salt, oil, and just enough lukewarm water to make a soft, smooth dough. Divide into 33 pieces (or fewer if you’re being reasonable about your sanity), cover with a cloth, and let rest 30 minutes.

While the dough rests, wash the chard, chop it fine, and cook it in boiling salted water. Drain well, squeeze out as much water as you can, then put it in a bowl with most of the grated cheese and the marjoram.

Drain the Prescinseua (or ricotta) of excess whey. Mix in the flour, oil, a tablespoon of the reserved cheese, salt, and pepper.

Roll out 13 of the dough balls very thin. Brush each with oil on both sides and layer them in a greased pan.

Spread the chard over the top. Drizzle with a little oil. Cover with the cheese mixture.

Make 12 little wells with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg into each. Season with salt and a drizzle of melted butter.

Roll out the remaining dough (again, very thin). Brush each sheet with oil and layer them gently over the pie. Fold the edges up to form a crust. Brush the top with oil.

Bake at 400°F for 50 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

Note on the Prescinseua Cheese

Although hard to find in the USA, Prescinseua is a fresh cheese, sort of halfway between ricotta and Greek yoghurt. It is both a clabbered cheese and a rennet-curdled cheese.

It has a neutral taste with a slight tang and provides more body than flavor to a dish. It is used for stuffed pastas, as an ingredient in savory pies, and stirred into sauces (particularly pesto). It is more of an ingredient rather than a cheese to be eaten on its own. That being said, it can also be spread on bread as part of an open-faced sandwich, or served with sugar, honey, cinnamon, chestnuts, or fruit preserves for breakfast.

Commercially, it is made from pasteurized cow’s milk.

The cheese is made in Liguria, Italy, particularly in Valle Stura, Masone, and Golfo del Tigullio. It doesn’t have an extensive life span, so it can’t really be shipped far from where it is made. In Liguria, it is sold in supermarkets in small tubs.

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There is a constant, recognizable thread in the career of Walter Potenza to elevate the level of Italian culinary culture in the United States. Besides his unquestionable culinary talent and winning business perspective, Chef Walter has been a relentless educator with passion and knowledge who defeats stereotypes. His life, career, and values are a model, an example to follow by any chef of Italian gastronomy working outside Italy.

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