Easter Foods and Easter Outfits: Savory Fennel Shortbread Crackers

 

When we were little kids, Easter meant the Easter Bunny, Easter Baskets, Easter Egg Hunts, the Easter Pagent, and of course, your Easter Outfit.  Because that's what you wore to the Easter Pagent and to church on Easter Sunday.  New dress, new patent leather Mary Jane shoes, and a new hat.  Because girls still had to wear hats to church back then.

My mother was very proficient in the Needle Arts.  All of them.  Knitting, Crochet, Tapestry, Rug Hooking and Braiding, Embroidery, and Sewing.  She taught me all of them as well, and I am glad to see that some of these arts are coming back into style, because it would be shame to lose them. 

So, the first Easter we were in the new house (the one my Dad built with his bare hands), she made us each coats for Spring, and we wore them to church on Easter Sunday. 

Now I am an accomplished knitter, and I offered to teach Grace the Girl.  Grace is 14 and has School, Art Class, Viola Class, Piano Class, Orchestra Practice, Chinese School, French Class and extra-curricular Math Class.

She said, "Margot, I'd love to learn, but honestly I don't when I would have the time."

But I'm grateful that she loves to get into the kitchen with me.  We've made everything we could think of with Peas and Artichokes, both Italian Rites of Spring. 

There was one dish my Mother used to make for Easter that I have not made, but once I had it, it becames one of the most cherished tradition at Easter.  Apizza Gain.  Sometimes called Pizza Rustica, Italian Easter Pie, Pizzagaina.  It's your basic heart attach in a loaf pan.  My mother's recipe was pretty sketchy and I have found others out there, but essentially it's 4-5 pounds of cured meats, 6 pounds of cheese, more than a dozen eggs, a ton of black pepper and crushed fennel.  It was traditionally made on Good Friday and then chilled and served after noon on Easter Saturday to break the Lenten Fast. 

We would break it up into pieces and share it with family and friends.  Sitting around the kitchen table, eating slice after slice with wine.  The combination of cheese, fennel, a crust, and the black pepper tastes great with nearly any kind of wine. 

These days, however, we limit the amount of cheese and cured meats we eat.  Who can afford the calories?  Who can afford to make the dish?  It costs more than $100 to make this loaf.

But I love the tradition of fennel and the black pepper with wine, so I thought I would try savory shortbread, something that tasted like the black pepper biscuits you can find in Italian delis. I have been working on a savory biscotti, but just haven't gotten the texture the way I want it.   I've tried to replace the sugar in a sweet recipe with cheese but you don't get that crispness or chewyness you get with sugar.  Then it hit me, eliminate the eggs.  That basically leaves shortbread.  The result is these Black Pepper and Fennel Shortbread Crackers.

These are quick to make, and lovely to serve to friends who drop over on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in the Spring, when it's just warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun and migrate to the fireplace when the sun goes down.

Update on Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 1:29PM by Margot

See the next article for my Appiza Gain Story.