Easter Pies

My sister and I are starting a new tradition. We are making our Easter Pies on Good Friday. The new part of the tradition is that from now on she will be taking the day off! You cannot start baking at 3 pm on Good Friday! You shouldn't start that late in the day on any given day! We made 3 different pies today. 2  different meat pies, one recipe is simply called Easter Pie ( the recipe is out of the newspaper) , and the other is Pizza Gaina, and is also known as Pizza Rustica. Until recently, I thought that this was one of my mothers recipes. I found out during a phone call to my Zia Josie, that this is not something that was a tradition on my mothers side of the family. It became a tradition while we lived on Daniel Drive in Farmingdale, New York.  I don't recall an Easter growing up that we didn't have these two pies on the table Easter Day! Thanks to "Aunt" Margie and "Aunt" Marie,  I now make these recipes and they have become a tradition in my own family.

Pizza Gaina


Filling
1/2 lb of Prosciutto
1/2 pound Genoa Salami
2 pieces of sweet dry sausage
1 pound basket cheese
1 pound ricotta
1 pound mozzarella
1/2 cup grated cheese ( I used Parmigiano)
12 eggs

Dough
4 cups flour
4 eggs
4 T Crisco
1 t baking powder
1/2 cup warm water

Cut up all your meats into chunks and put them into a bowl large enough for all of your filling ingredients.

Cut up your basket cheese, and mozzarella into chunks and mix with the ricotta cheese. Add the grated cheese and 12 eggs. Mix all together until it is well mixed.

Set this aside and start on your dough.  Mix all the ingredients together and knead. It will be a firm
dough, not sticky.

 Roll out the dough to fit in a large baking pan. It's not an easy dough to work with so keep rolling. Once you have the dough rolled out to the desired size place into your baking pan.

add the meat and cheese filling

usually the recipe calls for encasing the mixture into the dough, but I didn't have enough dough so I didn't do that! I just folded the ends of the dough towards the middle of the pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, turn down heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional hour.

Let the pie cool and then slice into small pieces, and enjoy. This can be served warm, or at room temp. It is very rich and very tasty.
Buon Appetito!
I'll be posting our sweet pie tomorrow!
Come back and see me soon!
Ciao!
xoxoxo
Lorraine