During a seven-year stint in Florence, Italy, Australian food writer Emiko Davies met a local sommelier and fell in love. The two married and, in addition to a husband, she forged a deep bond with the region’s food and its rich traditions – as any self-respecting food lover would do. Emiko, however, took it a step further. While her work was already featured in top Australian media (including SBS Food), she started a blog, emikodavies.com, to explore her newfound passion for her adopted home of Tuscany and the peculiarities of regional Italian cuisine. History geeks will find a kindred spirit in this enthused blogger as she trawls through antique cookbooks, tracks down original recipes and interviews local experts to shed light on time-old dishes for her blog. Her recipes also stay true to their roots: simple, seasonal and imbued with a love for the land from which they come. And with loads of tips and tricks from Emiko, they’re appealing to newbie and experienced cook alike. Now, you can also find this accomplished writer’s authoritative work on Food52, where she has a weekly recipe column and, next year when it’s released, in a comprehensive regional Italian cookbook published by Hardie Grant. For Easter, Emiko celebrates the treasured Italian festivity with a swathe of savoury and sweet dishes from across the country, including Roman-style semolina gnocchi, a Ligurian ricotta and silverbeet pie, Tuscan sweet aniseed-scented bread and a dessert of wheat berries and ricotta in short pastry from Naples.
I love traditional Easter recipes for the fact that you wait all year long for these dishes that you can only enjoy at this time of year (much like Christmas).
“Easter in Italy is a big event and it usually calls for food that takes a little extra effort, time and care to prepare, dishes that can take days to make that are not only born from ancient traditions but also represent the bounty of Italian spring. Eggs, for example, take on a whole new meaning around Easter time, symbolic of new life, renewal and resurrection, but also from a practical point of view – spring eggs are so abundant.
“Many of my favourite traditional Easter recipes inevitably call for a good number of eggs – Naples' pastiera, for example, a unique dessert of ricotta and wheat berries in a pie crust, perfumed with spices and orange blossom water; Tuscany's schiacciata di pasqua, a large, round, aniseed-studded sweet bread; or Liguria's torta pasqualina, a layered ‘Easter pie’ of ricotta and silverbeet – and are all dishes which, traditionally, should be started on the Thursday or Friday before Easter, if you want to do it right.
“There are other dishes that are not only reserved for Easter but are often present at family gatherings and special occasions, such as gnocchi alla romana, which is a great dish to include on the menu on Good Friday when meatless dishes are the thing. In fact, revered Italian food writer Pellegrino Artusi includes these 'Roman-style' gnocchi made of semolina cooked in milk and then baked with butter and parmesan on his ideal Good Friday menu in his 1891 cookbook, along with the aforementioned schiacciata di pasqua (which he calls stiacchiata).
“In the end, Easter is so much about sitting down with family around a large table and sharing a meal, or two – both Good Friday, a 'lean', meatless dinner and Easter Sunday lunch are celebrated. They are not necessarily extravagant meals, like perhaps at Christmas, but certainly traditional ones with family favourites that have been carefully prepared, often over a few days, with much love.”
I started my blog to… Fulfil my passion for Tuscan (and regional Italian) cuisine and my curiosity about the power of tradition when it comes to cooking and eating out in Florence, where I lived for seven years. Everyone goes out to eat the same dishes their mamma or nonna cook at home – dishes that have virtually gone unchanged for centuries. This inspires and amazes me to no end.
The must-cook recipe on my website is… Lemon tagliolini – it's a simple and quick pasta dish that is a staple in our house. It makes a great weeknight meal as it can be made with just a few ingredients. It's comforting enough for a homely meal, but fresh and zingy enough to make for guests – everyone always loves it.
I can’t wait to go back to… A little bacaro [bar] inVenice overlooking a small canal or alleyway, with a spritz in one hand and a little plate of sarde in saor and artichoke bottoms in the other.
My current food obsession is… Baking bread. I just did a wonderful workshop at Mill Lane near Thirroul, where I learned how to make beautiful French breads like fougasse and dragon tail baguettes – they're as pretty to look at as they are delicious.
Eating… Anything with fennel seeds in it takes me back to Tuscany.
Nugget of cooking wisdom… I like to think of Coco Chanel's advice – “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” – and apply it to cooking. I think simplicity is underrated these days and often people try to use too many ingredients and too many flavours in one dish. Pare it back.
I learnt to cook from… Watching my mother in the kitchen then, later, when I went to the US for university, I brought with me Donna Hay and Jamie Oliver and cooked constantly out of those few cookbooks until I graduated.
When I go back to my home town… Canberra,the first thing I eat is a delectable custard tart from Silo.
Easter means… An overdose of chocolate. We get given multiple chocolate eggs in all shapes and sizes. I end up making loads of chocolate cake to make good use of it all.
The one thing I can’t cook is… The food my Japanese grandmother would make. She was a wonderful cook and one thing I regret is not having demanded she teach me some of her favourite dishes.
If I ever met… Elizabeth David, I would ask her around for a bottle of wine and a long chat.
I always have… An assortment of different flours (almond meal, buckwheat, semolina, bread flour and plain flour are some staples) in my pantry, butter in my fridge and ice in my freezer.
My favourite biscuit to dunk in a cup of tea is… Cantuccini (or biscotti as they are known outside of Italy). They're rock hard so they always need a bit of liquid to soften them, whether it's tea, coffee or dessert wine.
My most sauce-splattered cookbook is… Pellegrino Artusi's Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891). It might sound obscure but it's the one cookbook you will probably find in every Italian household and many of the 790 recipes are my fail-safe favourites.
The most difficult food to shoot/style and make look tasty is… Offal. It's hard enough to make it sound enticing and something that people who aren't used to consider trying (many already have something against offal simply because of the idea of it), but it's also not pretty food to begin with so trying to style it and make it look appetising is a massive challenge!
Beyond my own blog, some of my favourites reads are… My Darling Lemon Thyme (Emma Galloway's cookbook is a family favourite); Rachel Eats for her witty writing and her unique British take on the cuisine of Rome's Testaccio neighbourhood; Poires au chocolat (although Emma Gardner recently stopped blogging, I still love her beautiful blog for her basic instructional dessert recipes, it's a great resource); Local is Lovely for my country living fix, plus the blogs of some good friends: Miss Foodwise, Juls' Kitchen and My Life Love Food. Aside from being great sources of inspiration, their blogs are always a good way of keeping up with friends who live far away.
Source: Emiko Davies
Source: Emiko Davies
Source: Emiko Davies
A rich, sweet Easter Sunday dessert. Source: Emiko Davies
Blog Appétit Editor Yasmin Newman
Blog Appétit is our curated list of go-to food blogs we love, with a focus on high-quality photography, trusted recipes, strong editorial themes and a unique voice and personality. View previous Blog Appétit entries.
