Articles by: N.l.

After 40 days of food abstinence and sacrifice for Lent, Easter is not just a religious holiday that celebrates Christs' resurrection it is a day that marks the beginning of spring by delivering its freshest ingredient to the dining table. 
 

In Italy, the Easter menu varies from region to region, each region has its own irresistible andflavorful dishes, but no matter where you are, there are three main ingredients that shine in every kitchen: eggs, lamb and Colomba cake. Their consumption is not just casual, it is has a deeper meaning as they have earned, through the ages, a Christian symbolic meaning. We can safely say that eggs represent birth and the never-ending renewal of life, lamb means sacrifice, having been a religious offering since the beginning of time. In Christianity it represents Jesus Christ, who is also called “the lamb of God.”
 

Colomba cake, a sweet bread in the shape of a dove, represents peace. The reason for its use as a symbol of peace is the story of Noah and the release of the white dove to find land after the Great Flood. When the dove returned with an olive branch, which is another peace symbol, it was clear that the world was ready to welcome back man.

Colomba's origins are legendary. Apparently, around the second half of the 6th century (it was the year 572), Alboino, the king of the Longobards, received, after besieging Pavia for three years, a gift from a local baker that was simply “curious.” It was a leavened bread, shaped like a dove that was given to him as a request of peace. Its ingredients were simple: eggs, flour and yeast. With the passing of time richer ingredients, such as butter, sugar and candied fruit, were added. This sweet bread is dotted with pearl sugar, almonds or chocolate. 
 

More recently, in the early 1900s the Milanese company “Motta” decided to make a product similar to the panettone (a type of sweet bread loaf originally from Milan that is prepared and enjoyed for Christmas), but with an aspect decidedly connected to Easter. The Colomba was born a dessert cake with a similar composition to the panettone, but that is enriched with the flavor of amaretto. In 1930, the Motta Company requested an artist specialized in public adverts, and produced the slogan “The Easter Colomba by Motta, the dessert that knows of springtime.” Colomba is a delicate dessert cake, it must be soft, aromatic on the outside, and moist on the inside. It is eaten as is or warmed up with mascarpone cream on the side, melted chocolate and even ice-cream.
 

The Easter table also features a wide variety of spring vegetables (such as artichokes and asparagus, chard, fava beans, young green beans, spinach and lettuce) and first fruits, religious offerings of the first agricultural produce of the harvest, symbols of earth's continuous rebirth. Vegetables are used as side dishes or as main ingredients in flavorful salads and quiches.

Then there are chocolate eggs; the story behind them is traced back to the city of Torino in the 1800's. They were created to honor, with a touch of sweetness, the traditional exchange of chicken eggs, symbols of the end of Lenten fasting and spring's rebirth. The first chocolate eggs were solid soon followed by hollow eggs.
 

The following are some traditional dishes that are always featured on the Italian Easter tables.

Appetizers

Torta pasqualina, a salty cake with puff pastry, veggies (like spinach or black cabbage) and cheese
Frittelle di carciofi, artichoke fritters
Carciofi con uova sode, artichokes with hard-boiled eggs
Uova strapazzate al tartufo, scrambled eggs with black truffles

First courses

Ravioli di ricotta, ricotta filled ravioli
Ravioli ai carciofi, artichoke filled ravioli
Risotto al forno con carciofi, risotto with artichokes
Risotto alla crema di asparagi, risotto with asparagus cream

Second courses

Agnello al forno con patate e pomodoro, oven-baked lamb with potatoes and tomatoes
Abbacchio brodettato, lamb in lemon-egg sauce. This is a Roman dish; the egg-and-lemon combination in the sauce is quite similar to what one finds in Jewish Italian dishes.
Costolette d’agnello fritte, fried lamb chops
Agnello al verde con carciofi, lamb with artichokes
Agnello di Pasqua alla moda pugliese, lamb Apulian-style, served with peas, onions, eggs and grated pecorino cheese
Agnello in fricassea, stewed lamb with artichoke and egg
Arrosto d’agnello con coratella, roasted lamb with coratella (the heart, lungs, and liver of a young lamb). This is typical of the cuisine of Lazio  

Desserts

Colomba mascarpone e cioccolato, colomba with mascarpone cream and chocolate
Colomba di Pasqua farcita, cream-filled colomba
Colomba pasquale al cioccolato, chocolate covered colomba
Uova di cioccolato, chocolate eggs
Marzapane, fruit
Pastiera napoletana, Neapolitan cake filled with ricotta cheese. “The modern pastiera was probably invented in a Neapolitan convent. An unknown nun wanted that cake, symbol of the Resurrectionperfume of the flowers of the orange trees which grew in the convent’s gardens. She mixed a handful of wheat to the white ricotta cheese, then she added some eggs, symbol of the new life, some water which had the fragrance of the flowers of the spring time, candied citron and aromatic Asian spices.
 

Regional specialties:

Abruzzo > Caciaovo, lamb stew served with eggs and cacio cheese

Calabria > Sgute calabresi, sweet dough topped with hard-boiled eggs

Campania > Pastiera napoletana

Friuli Venezia Giulia > Pinza pasquale triestina, semi-sweet focaccia bread, that can be enjoyed with salty ingredients, such as cold cuts, or sweet ones, such as fruit jams and chocolate.

Lazio > Arrosto d’agnello con coratella

Liguria > Torta pasqualina

Molise > Insalata pasquale, mixed salad served with hard-boiled quail eggs

Puglia > Scarcelle, shortbread covered in icing and chocolate eggs

Sardegna > Pillus, puff pastry “lasagna” stuffed, in alternate layers, with meat, prosciutto and tomato sauce

Umbria (and central Italy) > Pizza di Pasqua, a bread loaf that can be baked in a sweet or tasty fashion. The sweet version features candied fruit and sugar, while the tasty features sun-dried tomatoes and other vegetables.
Sicily >  Marzapane fruits made with ground almonds and sugar, covered with icing and painted like the Martorana fruit with almonds. "Agnus Dei" with sugar and clove paste
 

In Italy, the Monday immediately after Easter Sunday is also a national holiday, called Pasquetta (literally “Little Easter”) or Lunedì dell’Angelo (Angel’s Monday). The usual custom on Pasquetta is to go out—usually for a picnic, though many choose to eat out at a restaurant, or at a friend’s or relative’s instead.

After 40 days of food abstinence and sacrifice for Lent, Easter is not just a religious holiday that celebrates Christs' resurrection it is a day that marks the beginning of spring by delivering its freshest ingredient to the dining table. 
 

In Italy, the Easter menu varies from region to region, each region has its own irresistible andflavorful dishes, but no matter where you are, there are three main ingredients that shine in every kitchen: eggs, lamb and Colomba cake. Their consumption is not just casual, it is has a deeper meaning as they have earned, through the ages, a Christian symbolic meaning. We can safely say that eggs represent birth and the never-ending renewal of life, lamb means sacrifice, having been a religious offering since the beginning of time. In Christianity it represents Jesus Christ, who is also called “the lamb of God.”
 

Colomba cake, a sweet bread in the shape of a dove, represents peace. The reason for its use as a symbol of peace is the story of Noah and the release of the white dove to find land after the Great Flood. When the dove returned with an olive branch, which is another peace symbol, it was clear that the world was ready to welcome back man.

Colomba's origins are legendary. Apparently, around the second half of the 6th century (it was the year 572), Alboino, the king of the Longobards, received, after besieging Pavia for three years, a gift from a local baker that was simply “curious.” It was a leavened bread, shaped like a dove that was given to him as a request of peace. Its ingredients were simple: eggs, flour and yeast. With the passing of time richer ingredients, such as butter, sugar and candied fruit, were added. This sweet bread is dotted with pearl sugar, almonds or chocolate. 
 

More recently, in the early 1900s the Milanese company “Motta” decided to make a product similar to the panettone (a type of sweet bread loaf originally from Milan that is prepared and enjoyed for Christmas), but with an aspect decidedly connected to Easter. The Colomba was born a dessert cake with a similar composition to the panettone, but that is enriched with the flavor of amaretto. In 1930, the Motta Company requested an artist specialized in public adverts, and produced the slogan “The Easter Colomba by Motta, the dessert that knows of springtime.” Colomba is a delicate dessert cake, it must be soft, aromatic on the outside, and moist on the inside. It is eaten as is or warmed up with mascarpone cream on the side, melted chocolate and even ice-cream.
 

The Easter table also features a wide variety of spring vegetables (such as artichokes and asparagus, chard, fava beans, young green beans, spinach and lettuce) and first fruits, religious offerings of the first agricultural produce of the harvest, symbols of earth's continuous rebirth. Vegetables are used as side dishes or as main ingredients in flavorful salads and quiches.

Then there are chocolate eggs; the story behind them is traced back to the city of Torino in the 1800's. They were created to honor, with a touch of sweetness, the traditional exchange of chicken eggs, symbols of the end of Lenten fasting and spring's rebirth. The first chocolate eggs were solid soon followed by hollow eggs.
 

The following are some traditional dishes that are always featured on the Italian Easter tables.

Appetizers

Torta pasqualina, a salty cake with puff pastry, veggies (like spinach or black cabbage) and cheese
Frittelle di carciofi, artichoke fritters
Carciofi con uova sode, artichokes with hard-boiled eggs
Uova strapazzate al tartufo, scrambled eggs with black truffles

First courses

Ravioli di ricotta, ricotta filled ravioli
Ravioli ai carciofi, artichoke filled ravioli
Risotto al forno con carciofi, risotto with artichokes
Risotto alla crema di asparagi, risotto with asparagus cream

Second courses

Agnello al forno con patate e pomodoro, oven-baked lamb with potatoes and tomatoes
Abbacchio brodettato, lamb in lemon-egg sauce. This is a Roman dish; the egg-and-lemon combination in the sauce is quite similar to what one finds in Jewish Italian dishes.
Costolette d’agnello fritte, fried lamb chops
Agnello al verde con carciofi, lamb with artichokes
Agnello di Pasqua alla moda pugliese, lamb Apulian-style, served with peas, onions, eggs and grated pecorino cheese
Agnello in fricassea, stewed lamb with artichoke and egg
Arrosto d’agnello con coratella, roasted lamb with coratella (the heart, lungs, and liver of a young lamb). This is typical of the cuisine of Lazio  

Desserts

Colomba mascarpone e cioccolato, colomba with mascarpone cream and chocolate
Colomba di Pasqua farcita, cream-filled colomba
Colomba pasquale al cioccolato, chocolate covered colomba
Uova di cioccolato, chocolate eggs
Pastiera napoletana, Neapolitan cake filled with ricotta cheese. “The modern pastiera was probably invented in a Neapolitan convent. An unknown nun wanted that cake, symbol of the Resurrectionperfume of the flowers of the orange trees which grew in the convent’s gardens. She mixed a handful of wheat to the white ricotta cheese, then she added some eggs, symbol of the new life, some water which had the fragrance of the flowers of the spring time, candied citron and aromatic Asian spices.
 

Regional specialties:

Abruzzo > Caciaovo, lamb stew served with eggs and cacio cheese

Calabria > Sgute calabresi, sweet dough topped with hard-boiled eggs

Campania > Pastiera napoletana

Friuli Venezia Giulia > Pinza pasquale triestina, semi-sweet focaccia bread, that can be enjoyed with salty ingredients, such as cold cuts, or sweet ones, such as fruit jams and chocolate.

Lazio > Arrosto d’agnello con coratella

Liguria > Torta pasqualina

Molise > Insalata pasquale, mixed salad served with hard-boiled quail eggs

Puglia > Scarcelle, shortbread covered in icing and chocolate eggs

Sardegna > Pillus, puff pastry “lasagna” stuffed, in alternate layers, with meat, prosciutto and tomato sauce

Umbria (and central Italy) > Pizza di Pasqua, a bread loaf that can be baked in a sweet or tasty fashion. The sweet version features candied fruit and sugar, while the tasty features sun-dried tomatoes and other vegetables.
 

In Italy, the Monday immediately after Easter Sunday is also a national holiday, called Pasquetta (literally “Little Easter”) or Lunedì dell’Angelo (Angel’s Monday). The usual custom on Pasquetta is to go out—usually for a picnic, though many choose to eat out at a restaurant, or at a friend’s or relative’s instead.

 Sicilian born journalist Stefano Vaccara explores a story that has been hushed for decades: the story of the man behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Hailing from the home of Italy’s Mafia, Vaccara has taken a personal interest in its history and evolution in the United States. Since 2009, he has taught classes on the History of the Mafia at Herbert Lehman College, CUNY. “Mine is not a scoop,” Vaccara says about the book, “but just the confirmation of a suspicion I’ve always had and the result of simple research.”

Every semester Vaccara assigns an investigative paper on the JFK assassination, and 90% of the time his students come to the same conclusion: the real culprit was mafia boss Carlos Marcello.

New Orleans is said to be the real birthplace of the Sicilian-American Mafia. During the ’50s and ’60s Carlos Marcello, born Calogero Minacori, was the major figure of organized crime in Louisiana and across the Southeast. He was beyond reach until he crossed paths with the Kennedy brothers. In 1950, the U.S. Senate established an investigation into the illegal activities of the Mafia and other crime organizations throughout the country, but Marcello refused to answer the questions of the Senate Committee.

When John F. Kennedy became President in 1961, Robert Kennedy was nominated Attorney General, and Marcello was deported to Guatemala, where he planned his revenge. His search for a fall guy led him to Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union.
 

“They say the truth hurts, and in this case the truth has always been out there, but for some reason it has been kept dormant,” says Vaccara. “It was reawakened after Ted Kennedy’s death, and I’ve just stirred things up a bit further.”

Carlos Marcello:

The Man Behind the JFK Assassination

Stefano Vaccara
(English edition: Enigma Books, 2013)
(Italian edition: Editori Riuniti, 2013)
 

One of Italy’s greatest treasures, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Codex on the Flight of Birds,” is now exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., for 40 days this fall (from Sept. 13 until Oct. 22).

The extraordinary document, created ca. 1505, shows da Vinci’s interest in human flight by exploring bird flight and behavior. It includes sketches and descriptions of devices and aerodynamic principles related to mechanical flight that predate the invention of the airplane by 400 years.

The Codex, an early form of a personal notebook, is on view in a specially designed and secured case located in “The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age,” an exhibition whose centerpiece is Orville and Wilbur Wright’s 1903 Flyer, the world’s first successful powered aircraft. Nearby interactive stations will allow visitors to virtually leaf through the 18 folios (two-sided pages) of the Codex. The document will be loaned to the museum by the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, Italy, which owns a number of works by da Vinci. The 16th-century genius is known primarily as an artist and sculptor, but he is also renowned for his skills in architecture, music, mathematics, poetry, engineering, anatomy and botany.

“Most people have never seen an original work by Leonardo da Vinci, because so few are on display,” said Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, director of the museum. “Because the Codex has travelled to the United States only once before, and rarely left Italy, we feel especially fortunate to be able to share it with museum visitors.” 
 

“Bringing Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex to Washington in 2013, as we celebrate the Year of Italian Culture and 50 years of collaboration in space between Italy and America, means hosting a dialogue between the Renaissance and modernity, tradition and innovation,” said Claudio Bisogniero, the Italian Ambassador to the United States. “There is no better place than the National Air and Space Museum to house this incomparable work dedicated to flight and to appreciate Leonardo’s scientific genius.”
 

A model of an ornithopter, an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings, will be on view at the entrance of the exhibition. The work is based on a drawing by da Vinci in his Manuscript B, folio 74, owned by the Institut de France in Paris. The model was donated to the National Air and Space Museum by Finmeccanica.
 

“For Leonardo, art was the foundation of engineering, and engineering was an expression of art,” said Peter Jakab, chief curator of the museum. “The artist who painted the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper’ was a Renaissance visionary who saw the modern world before it was realized.” Jakab, an expert in early flight, is also serving as the curator of the special exhibition.
 

“The exhibition of Leonardo’s Codex at the Smithsonian, including in an electronically readable and scrollable format, is truly a unique event,” said the director of the Biblioteca Reale, Giovanni Saccani. “In fact, the Codex has rarely been exhibited outside the library, although in 2012, a reproduction of the document together with Leonardo’s self-portrait were fastened on a microchip and carried to Mars aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover—leading Leonardo’s genius on a mission to conquer space.”
 

This exhibit is organized by the museum and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Italian Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C., the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, and thanks to the support of the Bracco Foundation and corporations Finmeccanica and Tenaris. It is part of “2013—Year of Italian Culture in the U.S.,” an initiative held under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic, organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C., with the support of Corporate Ambassadors, Eni and Intesa Sanpaolo.
 

Admission to the exhibition is free and viewing is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Information on the exhibition and related activities will be on the museum’s website: airandspace.si.edu.
 

The National Air and Space Museum building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is located at Sixth Street and Independence Avenue S.W. The museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is located in Chantilly, Va., near Washington Dulles International Airport. Attendance at both buildings combined was 8 million in 2012, making it the most visited museum in America. The museum’s research, collections, exhibitions and programs focus on aeronautical history, space history and planetary studies. Both buildings are open from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. every day (closed Dec. 25).