For true Neapolitans it isn't Easter if there isn't Casatiello on the table because that rustic cake that stands out on all the tables on Easter Sunday and even more on those of Easter Monday embodies the spirit, the history, the tradition, the philosophy, the past and the present of the Neapolitan soul.
Because if someone thinks that it is only a very tasty savory pie to be eaten together with salami, hard-boiled eggs, cheese and, seasons permitting, broad beans, during the Easter holidays, they are really wrong. Casatiello is a complex microcosm that reflects the Neapolitan soul with its stories and its poverty. It is the main product of the recycled kitchen, of that kitchen where leftover products were used, jealously guarded, because nothing had to be thrown away.
So let's start from the name: Casatiello. This says a lot about her birth. The name derives from Caseus, cheese in Latin, from which Case, as cheese is called in Naples, the reason is quite evident from the abundance of provolone and pecorino for its preparation, as you will see in the recipe.
A concentrate of Christian and pagan symbols
The Neapolitan Casatiello is a cake made from a dough of bread flour that has undergone two leavenings integrated with a good dose of 'nzogna - suet and not lard, which makes the difference - plenty of pepper, salt. cicoli or Ciccioli, i.e. small appetizing morsels obtained by boiling pork fat for a long time, pecorino, sweet or spicy salami, semi-spicy provolone, Parmesan cheese, and more if desired, but here we enter the different territorial schools of thought, bacon, ham, mortadella and much more. Everything is worked up to form a donut-shaped roll which is then placed in a pan with a hole in the center and some whole eggs inserted halfway into the dough, and placed to cook in the oven.
In reality this should take place not in the home one but in a wood-burning oven to give the cake the right humidity and the right crunchiness.
And here we begin to delve into the specific analysis of the various meanings of this extraordinary product of Neapolitan gastronomy.
In the meantime, let's start with a basic concept. The Casatiello, with all that little bit of good things, was, in ancient times, already a party within a party. For the people of the lowlands, for that humanity that lived in the shadow of the rich, who certainly couldn't afford luxuries, such a rich dish was an extraordinary thing around which the whole family gathered to celebrate Christ's resurrection. Already its preparation engaged the women of the house at least a week before. Because you didn't want to take any risks and if it turned out badly it would take time to run for cover with a new preparation. Casatiello was also a moment of strong socialisation. In ancient Naples, the people who lived in poor rooms did not have kitchens or ovens. So all the women with the fruit of their labor showed up at the neighborhood bakery and lined up for cooking.
In the meantime, a sort of village was created in which everyone met, exchanged information on relatives and acquaintances, commented on life in the neighborhood, made some gossip, in short, the oven was a sort of forum for the poor or better poor. And this custom is still kept alive in Naples by a rotisserie in the Rione Sanità, notoriously one of the most disadvantaged districts of the city, the realm of marginalization, which still today is open to women who want to cook their Casatiello. A tradition of brotherhood therefore that fits well into the spirit of universal brotherhood that animates the religious holiday of Easter.
And while we are talking about brotherhood, we come to the hidden religious meaning of this savory pie which celebrates one of the highlights of Christianity, the resurrection of the son of God.
Meanwhile, the raw material used is bread, the key element of the Eucharist that Jesus instituted at the Last Supper with the Apostles ("To leave them a pledge of this love, never to leave his family and make them partakers of his Passover, instituted the Eucharist as a memorial of his death and resurrection, and commanded his Apostles to celebrate it until his return"). The shape of him is circular and this is because it recalls the crown of thorns that the soldiers imposed on his head as a joke. But the circularity of the donut also contains the religious meaning of life that is renewed.
When baking the cake, some crossed strips of dough are placed on the eggs inserted in the dough, and this recalls the cross on which Christ died. And the eggs? Perhaps of all the symbols, the egg is the most complex. It is the primordial seed from which the world originates. It marks the life that is reborn, of man the son of God who with the resurrection is reborn God, the vital principle that binds humanity to the mystery of faith. It is the same egg that is found in many churches of the Orthodox Christian East, it was hung as a symbol of rebirth, of life, of resurrection, and it is still the egg that Piero della Francesca in the Brera altarpiece suspends above the Madonna enthroned with the child, Angels to Saints as, as a crossing point of the lines that cross the composition, above all as a symbol of divine perfection and the rebirth of humanity. For this reason then at Easter we find the egg in all shapes and all materials, hard-boiled egg, colored egg, chocolate egg.
And all that has been said so far concerns only the external surface of the Casatiello as it is shown, as regards its being an element of celebration of a great moment in Christianity.
If we then go to examine its interior, if we go, so to speak, below deck, then we will find yet other meanings that bring us back to the Bible and even to the pagan world in adherence to the stereotype of the Neapolitan people who always love to amaze, present themselves in double aspects, face life between drama and irony.
So let's start with the pecorino that is made with sheep's milk, the milk that the lamb feeds on. And this brings us to the New Testament to St. John the Baptist welcoming Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Lamb therefore as a symbol of purity and innocence.
But from the New we find ourselves going backwards in the old testament to the Jewish culture for which the lamb is a symbol of recurring sacrifice. Not only in the Exodus is God himself ordering the sacrifice of lambs for the Jewish Passover: ”: “Each one gets a lamb for his family, a lamb for his house”.
However, next to the Lamb we find its opposite, the cicoli, a product of the pig, an animal sign of abundance for the humblest strata of the population over the centuries, but an impure animal for the Jewish culture, let's not even talk about it for the Muslim one, which God in Leviticus, giving instructions to Moses, even defines "Unclean". And it is truly curious, considering that in Christian iconography it is taken as an emblem of sin, greed and ignorance, that the pig enters the celebration of Easter. This is Naples!
Food of the poor, but ennobled by Lo cunto de li cunti
Humble food, food of the underprivileged, food of atavistic poverty, yet Casatiello more than any other element of Neapolitan gastronomy has had the honor of being the subject of poetic compositions, of playful verses, in its original form before the insertion of men it would appear in a painting by Giacomo Nani at Palazzo Reale, even in important literary works.
Surely it can be said that the spread of casatiello can be officially attested at least from the seventeenth century.
Nobly in the tale of La gatta Cenerentola included in the famous "Lo cunto de li cunti" by Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan writer who lived between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, the rustic cake is mentioned as one of the courses for the celebrations given by the king for find the girl who had lost her shoe:
«And, the destenato juorno has come, oh my good: what a mazzecatorio and what a bazzara that he did! Where did so many pastiere and casatielle come from? Where do you get them and the porpettes? Where are the maccarune and graviuole? So much so that 'nce could eat n'asserceto format.»
But there are even less humble compositions that record the strong bond between the Neapolitans and Casatiello and in a very passionate and nice way, like this one that follows which greedily lists all the components:
Easter, Jesus is risen. Everything is beautiful,
pure pecchè if he eats 'o casatiello.
Rotunno, lumpy, fat and savory,
'o saw, and your appetite is reborn.
What is it, do you want any of it?
Cu chella can make Easter and Easter Monday.
Salami, pepper, nzogna, water and flour,
and nu' sack 'e pecorino cheese:
ce vonno pur'e cicole 'and pork,
I'm heavy, but they don't hurt.
Pe copp'o casatiello are the eggs:
but comm'o little understood, who nunn'o try?
But we advise you to go and search the internet for an exhilarating "A legend of the house" where God's impatience is narrated in verse because he does not see Jesus Christ ascending to heaven after his death on the Cross. The Father therefore decides to personally descend to earth to go in search of his son and finds him with a group of friends eating a tasty Casatiello.
We report only the final verse with Jesus who justifies himself to the Father for his "girlishness":
“Turnann'a nuje: you are worried,
ca chi 'o ssape what happened to me…
All right, it's fernuto 'o melodrama.
Greetings to that friend, and we jamme.
Guys, do good, not evil:
we see you at the Last Judgment.
But 'o casatiello, me the agia purity,
pecchè pure Mammà l'adda pruvà.
Dad, give us no death, please,
and you will forgive me wholeheartedly:
I believed, as soon as I tasted it,
ca 'n Paraviso, I'd already gotten there!”
This is Naples. And from now on, when you happen to eat this Neapolitan gastronomic gem, know that you are not eating a cake but a condensation of religious history, secular culture and life.
