Seeking a really special recipe to top off Easter dinner for loved ones and friends this year? Pilgrims, your search is ended!

Look no further than the carefully crafted recipe for the mildly sweet rice pie below. Known as Pastiera di Riso, this lovely version originated in the
kitchen of Carmela (Millie) Martucci and has been faithfully recreated and adapted over the years by her granddaughter, Lisa Martucci Thibault, a friend of mine in real life and on Facebook.

Known to many as the Director of Marketing Communications & Fund Development at the Children’s Home Society of New Jersey, her many Facebook friends look forward to photos she shares of her creative culinary creations.

In fact, a real highlight of this Christmas season was the pictorial stop-by-stop tour of the food, landscapes, landmarks and marvelous faces she and her husband Rob, a corporate communicator for Bristol Myers, and their daughter, Emily, shared daily on their 12 days in France.

When Lisa agreed to share one of her Easter recipes with “What are you cooking for dinner?” I couldn’t wait to see what she’d come up with. The result exceeded all expectations.

Like so many of us who have fond memories of the dishes cooked by our immigrant grandmas, Lisa shared how she didn’t have a cookbook to work from.

“Sadly,” she said, her grandmother “did not commit a single recipe to writing, despite repeated requests from relatives. I later deduced this was because she was embarrassed that she could not write capably in English, the language she reluctantly adopted when her parents brought her to the U.S. from Naples in 1920 at the age of 12.”

“So, over the years, I have recreated, adapted and made many iterations of her recipes, including this Easter pie as well as my family’s staples – pasta fagioli, steamed artichokes, pumpkin and beans, pasta and lentils and basic marinara sauce (and no, we never called it gravy). I think that she would be happy knowing that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are keeping her culinary legacy very much alive.”

As Lisa described it, Pastiera di Riso is similar to the more widely known Pastiera Napoletana which can be found on the Internet and in at least one area pie shop – Emery’s Farm Country Bakery on Long Swamp Road in New Egypt – but it uses rice in place of wheat berries.

“Filled with cooked rice and ricotta, ours includes orange zest and cinnamon. The dense little Arborio (rice) nuggets give it a toothsome texture that pairs well with the creamy ricotta custard,” she said. “Over the years, I have done away with the crust entirely to give full attention to the rich filling enhanced with orange, cinnamon and dark chocolate chunks instead of the hard, gummy bits of candied citron that my Grandmother added.”

Lisa advises those who “believe all pie requires a crust,” to follow King Arthur Flour’s single pie crust recipe or buy a prepared crust noting “this is a judgment-free recipe.”

On a closing note, I’m hoping this isn’t the last recipe Lisa will share with “What are you cooking for dinner” and looking forward to perhaps hearing from daughter Emily, a senior archaeology major at Bryn Mawr College with an area interest in culinary rituals and diets of our ancestors!           

Emily will be the first in the family to go back to Italy. This summer she’ll be participating in a field research program in Turin. I hear the food there is worth writing about!                                                                                                                                                                            

GRANDMA MARTUCCI’S EASTER PIE                                                                                                         

Ingredients for the Filling:

-1 ½ cups of cooked arborio rice

-1 cup heavy cream

-1 cup sugar

-1 tsp cinnamon

-the zest of one orange

-15-16 ounces whole milk ricotta cheese (Lisa prefers Galbani or Sorrento but says any low-moisture types are fine)

-1 tbsp fior d’arancio (orange blossom water) optional

-4 eggs

-1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks

-powdered sugar for dusting

Directions for filling:

Bring 2 cups of water (unsalted) to a boil. Add 1 cup of Arborio rice, return to a boil, cover and lower the heat, slightly simmering for 20 minutes. Butter an empty (crustless) pie pan or make and place a pie crust into a pan.                                                                                                                             

Then, in a large bowl, combine: 5-16 oz. container of whole milk ricotta; 4 slightly beaten eggs;1 cup heavy cream;1-cup sugar (can also reduce to ¾ cup); 1 tsp. cinnamon; 1 tsp. orange blossom water (optional); zest of one orange and dark chocolate chunks.

Once cooked rice has cooled, stir in roughly 1 ½ cups to the ricotta mixture and scrape it into the pie crust/pan. Sometimes, Lisa sprinkles some extra chocolate chunks on top before baking.

Bake at 350F for about 50-60 minutes. Check doneness by inserting a toothpick in the center. Once cooled, dust with powdered sugar. It is delicious warm or cold but Lisa recommends storing the pie in the refrigerator.

Lois Rogers has been writing about faith, family and food (most notably in her award-winning blog, "Keeping the Feast" which has appeared in The Trenton Monitor) for most of her professional career. She may be reached at loisrogers66@gmail.com.