IAP 273: Personalize Your Pastiera with Special Guest Stefano Arturi

As we are about to embark on the solemn celebration of the Easter Triduum, for many Italian Americans, Holy Thursday means a day spent in the kitchen lovingly recreating recipes handed down from generation to generation. This week's guest, Stefano Arturi, knows a thing or two about recreating recipes. The author of the ⁠Italian Home Cooking Blog⁠, Stefano divides his time between Italy and London. ⁠Stefano came to our attention when he featured our very own POB's pastiera recipe on his site⁠, so we had to have him join us on the podcast! Stefano tells us about the various methods for making pastiera, as well as other Easter-time delicacies. We'll explore the continuing evolution of  contemporary Italian cuisine and the recent push to define Italian cuisine by rejecting what is not "traditional." We'll discuss Stefano's belief that Italian cuisine owes a debt to its large diasporic community and the many traditional recipes that have gone extinct in Italy which only survive in Italian immigrant communities. Stressing that Italy is not the country of chefs but of grandmothers, Stefano likes to remind us that food itself is a living thing, and perhaps no single item better represents this content evolution than the humble Pastiera Easter Pie! So gather the famiglia and turn the volume up as you make your own Easter food traditions come to life once again this week! This episode was sponsored by ⁠Mediaset Italia⁠.