April 18, 2025 • 26 mins
This savory pie with a filling of greens, cheese, and eggs satisfies around Easter -- or any time of year. Anney and Lauren slice into the history and cultures behind torta pascualina.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Anny Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode
for you about Pasqualina.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, any particular reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Lord, Yes, it's an Easter thing, and Easter is rapidly
approaching as we record this.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yes, it is. I have never heard of this, but
it looks delicious.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh it looks I've never had it, but I had
heard about it, and I the cravings, the cravings. Yeah, yeah,
I'm mad that I'm not eating it right now.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's pretty striking, like the it's beautiful, the cross sections.
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Well, listeners right in
if you've had it, if you have any recipes for it. Also,
this is going to be a bit of fun with pronunciation,
but we're going to do our best. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah. Part of the issue is that I'm kind of
bouncing back and forth between Italian and Spanish, and I
only know one of those languages at all, and I
know that both of them have very similar sounds, but
not always the same.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So here we are, Here, we are. We're gonna do
our best. For past episodes, we have done Egg adjacent things,
but not eggs, right.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, yes, you're correct there, Yes, all.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Right, we have done deviled eggs, Easter eggs, Kisha, that's
an older one, but we share. Yeah, meat pies and.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Ricata yeah yeah, yogurt, sure, yeah, yogurt.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Uh huh. Well, I guess that brings us to our
question for sure. Pasqualina? What is it?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, a pasqualina, often formally called a pasqualina, is a
type of savory pie made up of cheeses, fine chopped greens,
and whole cracked eggs that come out hard boiled when
they're baked in their double pastry crust. Different regions, and
I mean, you know, like neighborhoods and families have different
(02:16):
traditions about how like flaky versus bready the crust should be,
what types of greens and cheeses you use, what other
seasonings go in there, how towering the pie should be.
But you're basically looking at a rich and tender and
filling pie that's vegetarian and not very fussy, but still
(02:38):
feels like a special occasion food. And indeed, it is
often served at holiday feast type meals, especially Easter and
surrounding holidays, it's the kind of thing that, again I
haven't had it, but from what I am understanding here,
it's the kind of thing that tastes like light and
sort of spring timey, but it's really satisfying, like the
(03:00):
sensation of plopping down on a sunny hill top after
a nice brisk walk. Yeah, the great things I know,
I know, all right. So this is originally an Italian dish.
The word pasqualina comes from the Italian for easter pascua,
(03:24):
which itself comes from the Hebrew for passover pissak, which
I didn't know anyway. Torta technically means cake, but yes,
we're talking about a pie here. So the crust is
most traditionally a philo type dough, like thin sheets of
flour and water, rolled out and brushed with oil, and
then stacked several sheets high, the idea being that they
(03:47):
crisp up all golden and flaky in the oven. I
have seen variations like using puff pastry or something more
like a tender flaky pie crust, or something more like
doe or bready. I can't tell you what to do,
and I wouldn't ever, I would not unless you're about
to poison yourself. And then I would be like probably
(04:07):
not that. The greens are traditionally either sharred or baby artichokes,
chopped small and cooked down until they're soft before adding
them to the pie. However, any in seasoned greens can
be used as long as they're like hardy enough to
stand up to being cooked. You know, you don't want
mush in there. You do want to squish as much
(04:29):
moisture out of them before adding them in because you
don't want the crust to get soggy during baking. The
cheese is very traditionally this Genoan fresh cheese called Prussian
sewa that I had never heard of, but it's apparently
like tart and fine grained and kind of fluffy, soft, spreadable.
(04:51):
If you can't get a hold of that, and you
probably cannot outside of Genoa, folks often substitute in a
mixture of ricotta and maybe yogurt or crem fresh or
something like that. Adding some whist egg will help the
cheese day fluffy in the oven. Some recipes do call
for draining the dairy before you use it. Some recipes
(05:11):
will add extra richness and texture from other cheeses, like
maybe grated parmesan or mozzarella, and some recipes call for
your greens and your cheese to be mixed together in
the pie crust. Some call for separate layers. Both sound delicious.
I can't tell you what to do. Seasonings to all
(05:34):
of this might include, you know, the traditional like salt
and pepper and ground nutmeg and sauteed onions chopped up
fine and or perhaps boulder. Additions like garlic, cuman, bacon,
or maybe sweet or spicy peppers fresh or dried. Those
are more common in the South American diaspora, but people
(05:54):
do all kinds of things, like I saw a recipe
with a layer of liver patie in it, which sounds amazing,
but okay, yeah, right, Also I put this in the seasonings,
but it's kind of fifty to fifty. So I've seen
several recipes that use bread crumbs either in the filling
(06:18):
mix or spread along the bottom of the crust, and
that's also to help prevent sogginess. But yeah, it's kind
of a seasoning, depending on how you do your bread crumbs,
I don't know. And then you've got those those whole eggs,
so you make little indents in the top of the filling,
and then crack the whole egg, like a whole egg
(06:40):
into each indent around the pie. Like the idea being
that when you slice the finished pie, you get a
cross section of egg in each slice, which is just
real pretty against the green of the greens.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I've never seen it without a top. Crust y'all ride
in let me know.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Different variations have it baked anywhere from like really tall
in a spring form to kind of mid range and
a pie pan or cast iron skillet to almost flat
like a gallet but with a full top. Yeah, it
can be eaten warm or cool. I've seen recommendations to
eat it cool the next day because it kind of
(07:21):
like all the flavors have time to meld. And I've
seen it listed as like a brunch or lunch or dinner.
It is associated with the Easter, but can frequently be
found in cafes and from like street vendors anytime of
the year.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, it sounds good. And I also saw a lot
of warnings of like, let it why don't you take
it out of the other one? Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, yeah, let it cool and set up first, because
you don't want to, Yeah, because otherwise it'll all fall apart. Immediately. Absolutely,
we don't want that. No, no, no, absolutely not. Well
what about the nutrition, h depends on what you put
into it, but I mean, generally speaking, like that's a
(08:08):
good punch of fiber, a good punch of protein. Like
you're you're you're, you're giving yourself a really solid base.
I mean, you know, if a lot of Philo dough
and cheese is a treat, then treats are nice.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
They are, and this one sounds like a nice treat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Indeed it does, despite that we have zero numbers for you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Sorry. Yeah, it's very I mean it's it's one of
those things that is both very regional. It has gone
other places, but just yeah, people aren't really collecting numbers
on it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it hasn't really gone like quote unquote mainstream enough
outside of like Argentina and Yuguay and Genoa for there
to be really big international numbers and attention to it.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So yeah, yeah, it was funny because I was sometimes
when you don't come up with as many resources as
you want, you know, you try all these other terms.
And I looked up easter pie because I was like, okay, sure,
and I found a Sicilian one that's completely different and
very meat based, but I'm assuming they're related. But yeah,
(09:32):
I think it's just very fragmented. But okay, that being said,
we do have some history for you, Oh.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We do, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break
for a word from our.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you.
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So, the history of meat pies are so sort of
savory filling in cased in dough traces back to ancient times,
perhaps even to ancient Mesopotamia, and it makes sense because
it's convenient food to travel with or eat on the go.
Instances of pies like this existed in ancient Egypt, Rome
(10:18):
and Greece, for example. The more modern version of the
Italian pie that torta, likely came up in the courts
of Naples, perhaps with influence from similar things in French cuisine.
From there, torte, which is the plural, spread across the
country with all sorts of federations. Since they were convenient
(10:41):
and could be made cheaply, they were popular amongst people
who worked in the Italian countryside and for those who
didn't have a lot of resources. Torte were filling and
they could stretch over multiple meals and feed multiple people,
and torta pasqualina comes from this tradition, which, by the way,
like just looking at the pictures, it does look really filling.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh yeah, like I said, gould fill me up good
sturdy spinach and cheese pie with eggs in it?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah? Absolutely. There was also likely influence from the century's
long presence of North African Muslims and parts of Spain, Portugal,
and Italy. They brought with them a lot of crops
and dishes that changed the culinary landscape. We've talked about
this a lot before. One theory is that one of
the dishes they brought with them, the savory meat pie sambusak,
(11:33):
directly influenced the creation of torta pascadina. But all right.
Most sources suggest that pascodina was invented in the sixteenth
century or maybe the fifteenth century, in the northwestern region
of Italy known as the Guria, possibly in the capital
(11:53):
of Genoa specifically. At the time, the region couldn't grow
a lot of wheat, and buying some from the outside
was expensive. With what they had, people typically used one
pound of flour to make a thin dough that was
good for torte. For the filling, meat was often expensive,
so people would use local vegetables like mushrooms, spinach, fennel, leak,
(12:17):
sartochoke shard, and maybe eggs if they had chicken, cheese
if they could get it. So these are the ingredients
we're seeing it, yeah, come together. The history of torta
pascalina is pretty sparse, but there are some popular legends.
There's one main one. One of the most frequently repeated
(12:39):
versions is that women from the region created this dish
with thirty three layers of thin dough to represent the
thirty three years of Jesus's life, traditionally ten on the
bottom and twenty three on the top. It was this
savory pie with hard bowled eggs twelve around the edges
and one in the middle to represent Jesus in the
twelve decidleles, a type of fresh cheese, fresh spring vegetables
(13:03):
like spinach, shorter artichokes, and spices like marjoram. It was
a very springtime dish. It had a lot of symbolism.
It made it perfect for Easter celebrations. Again, some people
have gone back and forth about this but from when
I read, it was often eaten cold and was good
for picnics. While it wasn't necessarily expensive, it was more
(13:27):
time consuming than your usual torte, and it was perfect
for the endoflence and an important celebration like Easter in
a largely Catholic country. And it also just looks good.
It just looks It's pretty. Yeah, it's nice looking, all right.
So very brief breakdown on some of the early ingredients.
Lauren already touched on some of this earlier. They could
all be their own episodes, some of them have already been.
(13:51):
But yeah, briefly for the dairy pristin Sewa, which is
that acidic fresh cheese local to Laguria, was most likely used.
A very quick search suggest it first appeared in the
historical record in the fourteenth century, though it was likely
way older. You know on our cheese episodes. Oh my goodness. However,
(14:12):
this cheese was and remains, from what I understand, really
difficult to find outside of the region, so other cheeses
were subbed in it if folks can find it, like
ricotta that was a popular one, sometimes mixed with yogurt.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, because it is such a fresh cheese, right, it
doesn't like really travel that well, so.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Exactly the green vegetable part is a little more difficult
to pin down, at least traditionally, but I read that
it was shard or spinach or artichokes, all of which
were growing in Italy by this point. Whatever green spring
vegetable that they had access to, I would imagine, let's
put it in there. As far as seasonings went, the
(14:50):
early versions of this dish probably included a mix of
star anis, carowet seed, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and coriander, and
then eggs. We've talked about this before, but at the
time Catholics were not supposed to consume eggs during lint.
At the same time, you can't exactly tell a chicken
to stop playing eggs, so people ended up with a
lot of eggs come spring and at the end of lint. Meanwhile,
(15:13):
eggs were often symbolic for things like rejuvenation and rebirth,
which was a great fit both for the coming of
spring and the religious reason of the season for the
Easter celebration, the rebirth of Christ. So it's a very
symbolic dish. It did remain pretty regional for a while,
(15:34):
but It spread throughout Italy and parts of Europe, with
folks coming up with their own takes of it based
on what they had. Bartolomeo Scapi wrote about Torta pasquardina
in his fifteen seventy cook book, but by the nineteenth century,
the primary cookbooks about Ligurian cooking made no mention of
this dish needing to have the thirty three layers. They
(15:55):
mentioned it, but not the thirty three layers.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, it's one of those popular legends. It's hard to
say whether anyone was actually ever doing that, or if
it's just a nice story. It's hard to say at
any rate. In the early nineteen hundreds there was a
lot of immigration from Italy and Spain as well to
(16:19):
places like Argentina and Uruguay with the rise of fascism
in Europe, so there are traditions around Pascalina there as well.
By the late like nineteen thirties or so, the dish
was like pretty entrenched in those areas.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yes, these days people tend to use less layers and
less eggs. A lot of the articles I read were like,
just whatever layers, it's okay, do four to seven. I
don't know. Whatever you're up to. Yeah, exactly, but some
do still make it the traditional way, including traditional cooking methods.
(16:59):
I've read that or was a festival where people did
it until nineteen ninety four and they'll just died off.
And those who who do do it worry that the
tradition will soon be lost, like no one's going to
keep doing this anymore. But it does sound really good.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I'm like, I'm like, where can
I go to either find some or can I psych
myself up to make some? The question always, but yeah,
if y'all have any experience with it, or if you
(17:37):
went to a festival about it back in the day.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
We would love to hear about that.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
We absolutely would. But that's what we have to say
about Pasquald enough for now it is.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
We do already have some listener mail for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This May every time.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yes, Sarah wrote, Hello from northern California, wine and wheat Country.
I don't have any fun stories to tell you, but
I have a book recommendation I think is super interesting,
and I'm including cute pet photos just because the book
is Hippie Food, How Back to the Landers, Long hairs,
(18:41):
and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat? By Jonathan Coffman.
It traces the social history of natural and health food
movements from early twentieth century Los Angeles to macrobiotics, to
organic and farm to table restaurants to plant based raw
food or fasting slash juicing movements that are feel startingly
similar to this day. It's funny and insightful, and I'd
(19:04):
love to hear you do a guest interview with the
author as promised. Here are a few kitties to brighten
your day. Top photo is Frankie. Middle is Elka, eighteen
years young, but who earned the nickname Elcatraz for her
wild and wooly kitten antucks. And there was a third
photo of Marlon Brando with his cat on his shoulder
(19:28):
writing which, by the way, the first time I read
this email, I thought you had a cat named Marlon Brando,
and oh it was really funny.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That is a great name for a cat.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
That would be good, But I mean these are also excellent,
excellent names.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yes, yes, absolutely, And the photos are two lovely tabby cats,
both of whom look very relaxed and happy and petible.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yes, but I can see the chaos lying in wait.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Oh always that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's just understood.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah. In between the end of our history section and
the listener mail, I in fact had to kick my
kitten out of the recording studio because there were a
number of thuds that occurred and I was like, well, well,
no more of that.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I don't know what just happened, but out you go. Yes,
let's just nit this in the bud. But yeah, we
do love we love book recommendations as well, and this
sounds really interesting. I would love to trace the just
kind of movements, those kind of health movements.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Oh yeah, no they are. They are also wild and
wild and wooly. This is true and always always super interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
M thank you for paying the pet tax.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yes, yeah, yeah, and always a book recommendation. Yeah, please
give me a bigger reading list and I will maybe
get to things that aren't the Hunger Games someday. Segal wrote,
Israel has a tea bag conspiracy. In the nineteen sixties,
there was a law in Israel that food packages cannot
be sealed with staples. That was because sometimes the staples
(21:18):
fell into the food. Strangely enough, that was also applied
to tea bags even though they're not opened. This allowed
an Israeli tea company named Wzotski to take over the
market of tea in Israel. They use glue because no
foreign company will change its packaging for such a small market.
In nineteen nineties, there was a request to change the standard,
(21:39):
but the Wotski lobbyists were able to get it denied,
and in nineteen ninety six it got all the way
to the Israeli Supreme Court where it was reversed, and
since then the tea market was opened to other packaging
and companies. The sad thing is that Wazotski still controls
the market because Israelis are used to buying it, so
you'll find less varieties and less companies in Israeli stie.
(22:00):
As a tea lover, I make it a habit to
buy anything but Wazotski and explore other kinds. Now to
gafilter Fish. Gafilter Fish always brings me to the memories
of my grandmother Anya, who passed away in twenty twenty
two at the age of ninety six, even though she
grew up in the Soviet Union, who oppressed Jews and
Jewish culture. There were two Jewish cuisine dishes she knew
(22:23):
how to make, gafilter fish and mutza balls, which she
also puts some chicken inside. And we waited for the
New Year and Passover to eat the kafilter fish, which
she made the traditional way, meaning she filled the fish
with its meat and cooked it like this. My uncle
always ate the head of the fish. Now my aunt
is making experiments of making it, so we're hopeful, and
(22:44):
whenever we eat the store bought my mom's partner, who's
of Yemenite descent so didn't grow up on this, says, oh,
but the gafilter fish your mother made. I guess we'll
never have the good ones anymore, but will miss her
like she deserves to be missed. Now to flavors, My
theory of why store bought gafilter fish is so bad
is that it sits in the jar in the carrot juice,
(23:05):
so when you eat it, all you can taste is carrot.
Another thing about the taste is that there are differences
between the Polish Jews who make the gafilter fish and
the horse radish sweet and the Russian Jews who make
it spicy to hot.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
There was a yuck with the.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Sweet one and a yum with the spicy one in
there to close, the stories about making the horse radish
for passover always sound more like a drug.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Lab than a kitchen.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah that's if y'all have never grated fresh horse radish.
This is an accurate statement. It is that the fumes
are quite strong and you really have to mitigate them
for your own safety. Oh oh, but I love I
love that your grandma made the stuffed gaffilter fish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I had never heard of that before I did the reading.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
For that episode. Yeah, that is really cool. And you
know it's sad that you won't maybe have it that
way again, but the memory lives on.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah. May her memory be a blessing. Absolutely, Yes, Oh,
good mats of I've never heard of putting chicken inside
of Matza balls, And now I'm like, why have I? Well,
I haven't I done that. Why don't you put a
little bit of good bold chicken inside of a Matza ball?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
That sounds delicious, That sounds absolutely delicious, And as someone
who's never had any jarred goafil to fish, I think
your theory sounds. I think it sound.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And there's texture things that wind up when you when
you just have something sitting in liquid like that for
too long. There's yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I also have to say I've never thought about tea
bags as much as I have during and after we
did that episode. But now some of you have written
in things about like just the way they work, the engineering,
and I've just never considered it before. But this makes
sense to me too, Like there's just different ways. We've
(25:15):
already read some of the listener mail about how tea
bags look in different countries.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I love that there was a regulation about it. That's yeah,
because of the staple, which hypothetically isn't going to loosen.
I mean you would notice, you would notice if you
would have to strain a number of things out of
your tea if the tea bags opened, if like the
staple came loose.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, but I you know, safety is great.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I don't know it's true, it's true, but keep those
keep those coming in listeners. I'm really enjoying hearing about
the t bag situation in other countries, the tea bag situation. Yes, yes,
absolutely yes. Well in the meantime, thanks to both of
(26:06):
those listeners for writing in. If you would like to
write to us, you can. Our email is Hello at
saborpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber Pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio.
Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(26:32):
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Anny Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode
for you about Pasqualina.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, any particular reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Lord, Yes, it's an Easter thing, and Easter is rapidly
approaching as we record this.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yes, it is. I have never heard of this, but
it looks delicious.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh it looks I've never had it, but I had
heard about it, and I the cravings, the cravings. Yeah, yeah,
I'm mad that I'm not eating it right now.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's pretty striking, like the it's beautiful, the cross sections.
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Well, listeners right in
if you've had it, if you have any recipes for it. Also,
this is going to be a bit of fun with pronunciation,
but we're going to do our best. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah. Part of the issue is that I'm kind of
bouncing back and forth between Italian and Spanish, and I
only know one of those languages at all, and I
know that both of them have very similar sounds, but
not always the same.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So here we are, Here, we are. We're gonna do
our best. For past episodes, we have done Egg adjacent things,
but not eggs, right.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, yes, you're correct there, Yes, all.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Right, we have done deviled eggs, Easter eggs, Kisha, that's
an older one, but we share. Yeah, meat pies and.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Ricata yeah yeah, yogurt, sure, yeah, yogurt.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Uh huh. Well, I guess that brings us to our
question for sure. Pasqualina? What is it?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, a pasqualina, often formally called a pasqualina, is a
type of savory pie made up of cheeses, fine chopped greens,
and whole cracked eggs that come out hard boiled when
they're baked in their double pastry crust. Different regions, and
I mean, you know, like neighborhoods and families have different
(02:16):
traditions about how like flaky versus bready the crust should be,
what types of greens and cheeses you use, what other
seasonings go in there, how towering the pie should be.
But you're basically looking at a rich and tender and
filling pie that's vegetarian and not very fussy, but still
(02:38):
feels like a special occasion food. And indeed, it is
often served at holiday feast type meals, especially Easter and
surrounding holidays, it's the kind of thing that, again I
haven't had it, but from what I am understanding here,
it's the kind of thing that tastes like light and
sort of spring timey, but it's really satisfying, like the
(03:00):
sensation of plopping down on a sunny hill top after
a nice brisk walk. Yeah, the great things I know,
I know, all right. So this is originally an Italian dish.
The word pasqualina comes from the Italian for easter pascua,
(03:24):
which itself comes from the Hebrew for passover pissak, which
I didn't know anyway. Torta technically means cake, but yes,
we're talking about a pie here. So the crust is
most traditionally a philo type dough, like thin sheets of
flour and water, rolled out and brushed with oil, and
then stacked several sheets high, the idea being that they
(03:47):
crisp up all golden and flaky in the oven. I
have seen variations like using puff pastry or something more
like a tender flaky pie crust, or something more like
doe or bready. I can't tell you what to do,
and I wouldn't ever, I would not unless you're about
to poison yourself. And then I would be like probably
(04:07):
not that. The greens are traditionally either sharred or baby artichokes,
chopped small and cooked down until they're soft before adding
them to the pie. However, any in seasoned greens can
be used as long as they're like hardy enough to
stand up to being cooked. You know, you don't want
mush in there. You do want to squish as much
(04:29):
moisture out of them before adding them in because you
don't want the crust to get soggy during baking. The
cheese is very traditionally this Genoan fresh cheese called Prussian
sewa that I had never heard of, but it's apparently
like tart and fine grained and kind of fluffy, soft, spreadable.
(04:51):
If you can't get a hold of that, and you
probably cannot outside of Genoa, folks often substitute in a
mixture of ricotta and maybe yogurt or crem fresh or
something like that. Adding some whist egg will help the
cheese day fluffy in the oven. Some recipes do call
for draining the dairy before you use it. Some recipes
(05:11):
will add extra richness and texture from other cheeses, like
maybe grated parmesan or mozzarella, and some recipes call for
your greens and your cheese to be mixed together in
the pie crust. Some call for separate layers. Both sound delicious.
I can't tell you what to do. Seasonings to all
(05:34):
of this might include, you know, the traditional like salt
and pepper and ground nutmeg and sauteed onions chopped up
fine and or perhaps boulder. Additions like garlic, cuman, bacon,
or maybe sweet or spicy peppers fresh or dried. Those
are more common in the South American diaspora, but people
(05:54):
do all kinds of things, like I saw a recipe
with a layer of liver patie in it, which sounds amazing,
but okay, yeah, right, Also I put this in the seasonings,
but it's kind of fifty to fifty. So I've seen
several recipes that use bread crumbs either in the filling
(06:18):
mix or spread along the bottom of the crust, and
that's also to help prevent sogginess. But yeah, it's kind
of a seasoning, depending on how you do your bread crumbs,
I don't know. And then you've got those those whole eggs,
so you make little indents in the top of the filling,
and then crack the whole egg, like a whole egg
(06:40):
into each indent around the pie. Like the idea being
that when you slice the finished pie, you get a
cross section of egg in each slice, which is just
real pretty against the green of the greens.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I've never seen it without a top. Crust y'all ride
in let me know.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Different variations have it baked anywhere from like really tall
in a spring form to kind of mid range and
a pie pan or cast iron skillet to almost flat
like a gallet but with a full top. Yeah, it
can be eaten warm or cool. I've seen recommendations to
eat it cool the next day because it kind of
(07:21):
like all the flavors have time to meld. And I've
seen it listed as like a brunch or lunch or dinner.
It is associated with the Easter, but can frequently be
found in cafes and from like street vendors anytime of
the year.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, it sounds good. And I also saw a lot
of warnings of like, let it why don't you take
it out of the other one? Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, yeah, let it cool and set up first, because
you don't want to, Yeah, because otherwise it'll all fall apart. Immediately. Absolutely,
we don't want that. No, no, no, absolutely not. Well
what about the nutrition, h depends on what you put
into it, but I mean, generally speaking, like that's a
(08:08):
good punch of fiber, a good punch of protein. Like
you're you're you're, you're giving yourself a really solid base.
I mean, you know, if a lot of Philo dough
and cheese is a treat, then treats are nice.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
They are, and this one sounds like a nice treat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Indeed it does, despite that we have zero numbers for you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Sorry. Yeah, it's very I mean it's it's one of
those things that is both very regional. It has gone
other places, but just yeah, people aren't really collecting numbers
on it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it hasn't really gone like quote unquote mainstream enough
outside of like Argentina and Yuguay and Genoa for there
to be really big international numbers and attention to it.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So yeah, yeah, it was funny because I was sometimes
when you don't come up with as many resources as
you want, you know, you try all these other terms.
And I looked up easter pie because I was like, okay, sure,
and I found a Sicilian one that's completely different and
very meat based, but I'm assuming they're related. But yeah,
(09:32):
I think it's just very fragmented. But okay, that being said,
we do have some history for you, Oh.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We do, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break
for a word from our.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you.
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So, the history of meat pies are so sort of
savory filling in cased in dough traces back to ancient times,
perhaps even to ancient Mesopotamia, and it makes sense because
it's convenient food to travel with or eat on the go.
Instances of pies like this existed in ancient Egypt, Rome
(10:18):
and Greece, for example. The more modern version of the
Italian pie that torta, likely came up in the courts
of Naples, perhaps with influence from similar things in French cuisine.
From there, torte, which is the plural, spread across the
country with all sorts of federations. Since they were convenient
(10:41):
and could be made cheaply, they were popular amongst people
who worked in the Italian countryside and for those who
didn't have a lot of resources. Torte were filling and
they could stretch over multiple meals and feed multiple people,
and torta pasqualina comes from this tradition, which, by the way,
like just looking at the pictures, it does look really filling.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh yeah, like I said, gould fill me up good
sturdy spinach and cheese pie with eggs in it?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah? Absolutely. There was also likely influence from the century's
long presence of North African Muslims and parts of Spain, Portugal,
and Italy. They brought with them a lot of crops
and dishes that changed the culinary landscape. We've talked about
this a lot before. One theory is that one of
the dishes they brought with them, the savory meat pie sambusak,
(11:33):
directly influenced the creation of torta pascadina. But all right.
Most sources suggest that pascodina was invented in the sixteenth
century or maybe the fifteenth century, in the northwestern region
of Italy known as the Guria, possibly in the capital
(11:53):
of Genoa specifically. At the time, the region couldn't grow
a lot of wheat, and buying some from the outside
was expensive. With what they had, people typically used one
pound of flour to make a thin dough that was
good for torte. For the filling, meat was often expensive,
so people would use local vegetables like mushrooms, spinach, fennel, leak,
(12:17):
sartochoke shard, and maybe eggs if they had chicken, cheese
if they could get it. So these are the ingredients
we're seeing it, yeah, come together. The history of torta
pascalina is pretty sparse, but there are some popular legends.
There's one main one. One of the most frequently repeated
(12:39):
versions is that women from the region created this dish
with thirty three layers of thin dough to represent the
thirty three years of Jesus's life, traditionally ten on the
bottom and twenty three on the top. It was this
savory pie with hard bowled eggs twelve around the edges
and one in the middle to represent Jesus in the
twelve decidleles, a type of fresh cheese, fresh spring vegetables
(13:03):
like spinach, shorter artichokes, and spices like marjoram. It was
a very springtime dish. It had a lot of symbolism.
It made it perfect for Easter celebrations. Again, some people
have gone back and forth about this but from when
I read, it was often eaten cold and was good
for picnics. While it wasn't necessarily expensive, it was more
(13:27):
time consuming than your usual torte, and it was perfect
for the endoflence and an important celebration like Easter in
a largely Catholic country. And it also just looks good.
It just looks It's pretty. Yeah, it's nice looking, all right.
So very brief breakdown on some of the early ingredients.
Lauren already touched on some of this earlier. They could
all be their own episodes, some of them have already been.
(13:51):
But yeah, briefly for the dairy pristin Sewa, which is
that acidic fresh cheese local to Laguria, was most likely used.
A very quick search suggest it first appeared in the
historical record in the fourteenth century, though it was likely
way older. You know on our cheese episodes. Oh my goodness. However,
(14:12):
this cheese was and remains, from what I understand, really
difficult to find outside of the region, so other cheeses
were subbed in it if folks can find it, like
ricotta that was a popular one, sometimes mixed with yogurt.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, because it is such a fresh cheese, right, it
doesn't like really travel that well, so.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Exactly the green vegetable part is a little more difficult
to pin down, at least traditionally, but I read that
it was shard or spinach or artichokes, all of which
were growing in Italy by this point. Whatever green spring
vegetable that they had access to, I would imagine, let's
put it in there. As far as seasonings went, the
(14:50):
early versions of this dish probably included a mix of
star anis, carowet seed, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and coriander, and
then eggs. We've talked about this before, but at the
time Catholics were not supposed to consume eggs during lint.
At the same time, you can't exactly tell a chicken
to stop playing eggs, so people ended up with a
lot of eggs come spring and at the end of lint. Meanwhile,
(15:13):
eggs were often symbolic for things like rejuvenation and rebirth,
which was a great fit both for the coming of
spring and the religious reason of the season for the
Easter celebration, the rebirth of Christ. So it's a very
symbolic dish. It did remain pretty regional for a while,
(15:34):
but It spread throughout Italy and parts of Europe, with
folks coming up with their own takes of it based
on what they had. Bartolomeo Scapi wrote about Torta pasquardina
in his fifteen seventy cook book, but by the nineteenth century,
the primary cookbooks about Ligurian cooking made no mention of
this dish needing to have the thirty three layers. They
(15:55):
mentioned it, but not the thirty three layers.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, it's one of those popular legends. It's hard to
say whether anyone was actually ever doing that, or if
it's just a nice story. It's hard to say at
any rate. In the early nineteen hundreds there was a
lot of immigration from Italy and Spain as well to
(16:19):
places like Argentina and Uruguay with the rise of fascism
in Europe, so there are traditions around Pascalina there as well.
By the late like nineteen thirties or so, the dish
was like pretty entrenched in those areas.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yes, these days people tend to use less layers and
less eggs. A lot of the articles I read were like,
just whatever layers, it's okay, do four to seven. I
don't know. Whatever you're up to. Yeah, exactly, but some
do still make it the traditional way, including traditional cooking methods.
(16:59):
I've read that or was a festival where people did
it until nineteen ninety four and they'll just died off.
And those who who do do it worry that the
tradition will soon be lost, like no one's going to
keep doing this anymore. But it does sound really good.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I'm like, I'm like, where can
I go to either find some or can I psych
myself up to make some? The question always, but yeah,
if y'all have any experience with it, or if you
(17:37):
went to a festival about it back in the day.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
We would love to hear about that.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
We absolutely would. But that's what we have to say
about Pasquald enough for now it is.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
We do already have some listener mail for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This May every time.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yes, Sarah wrote, Hello from northern California, wine and wheat Country.
I don't have any fun stories to tell you, but
I have a book recommendation I think is super interesting,
and I'm including cute pet photos just because the book
is Hippie Food, How Back to the Landers, Long hairs,
(18:41):
and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat? By Jonathan Coffman.
It traces the social history of natural and health food
movements from early twentieth century Los Angeles to macrobiotics, to
organic and farm to table restaurants to plant based raw
food or fasting slash juicing movements that are feel startingly
similar to this day. It's funny and insightful, and I'd
(19:04):
love to hear you do a guest interview with the
author as promised. Here are a few kitties to brighten
your day. Top photo is Frankie. Middle is Elka, eighteen
years young, but who earned the nickname Elcatraz for her
wild and wooly kitten antucks. And there was a third
photo of Marlon Brando with his cat on his shoulder
(19:28):
writing which, by the way, the first time I read
this email, I thought you had a cat named Marlon Brando,
and oh it was really funny.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That is a great name for a cat.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
That would be good, But I mean these are also excellent,
excellent names.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yes, yes, absolutely, And the photos are two lovely tabby cats,
both of whom look very relaxed and happy and petible.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yes, but I can see the chaos lying in wait.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Oh always that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's just understood.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah. In between the end of our history section and
the listener mail, I in fact had to kick my
kitten out of the recording studio because there were a
number of thuds that occurred and I was like, well, well,
no more of that.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I don't know what just happened, but out you go. Yes,
let's just nit this in the bud. But yeah, we
do love we love book recommendations as well, and this
sounds really interesting. I would love to trace the just
kind of movements, those kind of health movements.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Oh yeah, no they are. They are also wild and
wild and wooly. This is true and always always super interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
M thank you for paying the pet tax.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yes, yeah, yeah, and always a book recommendation. Yeah, please
give me a bigger reading list and I will maybe
get to things that aren't the Hunger Games someday. Segal wrote,
Israel has a tea bag conspiracy. In the nineteen sixties,
there was a law in Israel that food packages cannot
be sealed with staples. That was because sometimes the staples
(21:18):
fell into the food. Strangely enough, that was also applied
to tea bags even though they're not opened. This allowed
an Israeli tea company named Wzotski to take over the
market of tea in Israel. They use glue because no
foreign company will change its packaging for such a small market.
In nineteen nineties, there was a request to change the standard,
(21:39):
but the Wotski lobbyists were able to get it denied,
and in nineteen ninety six it got all the way
to the Israeli Supreme Court where it was reversed, and
since then the tea market was opened to other packaging
and companies. The sad thing is that Wazotski still controls
the market because Israelis are used to buying it, so
you'll find less varieties and less companies in Israeli stie.
(22:00):
As a tea lover, I make it a habit to
buy anything but Wazotski and explore other kinds. Now to
gafilter Fish. Gafilter Fish always brings me to the memories
of my grandmother Anya, who passed away in twenty twenty
two at the age of ninety six, even though she
grew up in the Soviet Union, who oppressed Jews and
Jewish culture. There were two Jewish cuisine dishes she knew
(22:23):
how to make, gafilter fish and mutza balls, which she
also puts some chicken inside. And we waited for the
New Year and Passover to eat the kafilter fish, which
she made the traditional way, meaning she filled the fish
with its meat and cooked it like this. My uncle
always ate the head of the fish. Now my aunt
is making experiments of making it, so we're hopeful, and
(22:44):
whenever we eat the store bought my mom's partner, who's
of Yemenite descent so didn't grow up on this, says, oh,
but the gafilter fish your mother made. I guess we'll
never have the good ones anymore, but will miss her
like she deserves to be missed. Now to flavors, My
theory of why store bought gafilter fish is so bad
is that it sits in the jar in the carrot juice,
(23:05):
so when you eat it, all you can taste is carrot.
Another thing about the taste is that there are differences
between the Polish Jews who make the gafilter fish and
the horse radish sweet and the Russian Jews who make
it spicy to hot.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
There was a yuck with the.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Sweet one and a yum with the spicy one in
there to close, the stories about making the horse radish
for passover always sound more like a drug.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Lab than a kitchen.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah that's if y'all have never grated fresh horse radish.
This is an accurate statement. It is that the fumes
are quite strong and you really have to mitigate them
for your own safety. Oh oh, but I love I
love that your grandma made the stuffed gaffilter fish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I had never heard of that before I did the reading.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
For that episode. Yeah, that is really cool. And you
know it's sad that you won't maybe have it that
way again, but the memory lives on.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah. May her memory be a blessing. Absolutely, Yes, Oh,
good mats of I've never heard of putting chicken inside
of Matza balls, And now I'm like, why have I? Well,
I haven't I done that. Why don't you put a
little bit of good bold chicken inside of a Matza ball?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
That sounds delicious, That sounds absolutely delicious, And as someone
who's never had any jarred goafil to fish, I think
your theory sounds. I think it sound.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And there's texture things that wind up when you when
you just have something sitting in liquid like that for
too long. There's yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I also have to say I've never thought about tea
bags as much as I have during and after we
did that episode. But now some of you have written
in things about like just the way they work, the engineering,
and I've just never considered it before. But this makes
sense to me too, Like there's just different ways. We've
(25:15):
already read some of the listener mail about how tea
bags look in different countries.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I love that there was a regulation about it. That's yeah,
because of the staple, which hypothetically isn't going to loosen.
I mean you would notice, you would notice if you
would have to strain a number of things out of
your tea if the tea bags opened, if like the
staple came loose.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, but I you know, safety is great.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I don't know it's true, it's true, but keep those
keep those coming in listeners. I'm really enjoying hearing about
the t bag situation in other countries, the tea bag situation. Yes, yes,
absolutely yes. Well in the meantime, thanks to both of
(26:06):
those listeners for writing in. If you would like to
write to us, you can. Our email is Hello at
saborpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber Pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio.
Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(26:32):
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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