This year, Italians spent more than 2 billion euros to set Easter tables, which in 86% of cases they chose to spend at home, at home or with relatives and friends. This is the budget estimated by Coldiretti/Ixe' for the Easter lunch from which it also appears that 9% decided to go to a restaurant or to a farm while 3% opted for an outdoor picnic, with an overall expenditure which remained significantly at last year's levels. There are on average six people at each table – explains Coldiretti – while preparing the Easter lunch took around 2.1 hours in the kitchen.
The most representative food – underlines Coldiretti – of the Easter tradition for the majority of Italians remains lamb meat served at one table in three (33%) in homes, restaurants and farms. For dessert, however, the dove beat the chocolate eggs even though more than four out of 10 families (43%) resorted to DIY this year, preparing typical Easter desserts at home, with the return to the big style of regional recipes. The winners are above all the traditional recipes that characterize the entire country from north to south, such as stringy gnocchi from Piedmont, chicken broth and boiled egg soup and pappardelle with rabbit ragout in Tuscany but also coralina, salami typical accompanied by a cheese pizza eaten during breakfast throughout Lazio. If passatelli is de rigeur in Romagna, in Molise it is the Happy Easter salad with green beans, hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes.
In Puglia – continues Coldiretti – the prince of the Easter table is the Cutturiddu, the lamb cooked in a broth with herbs typical of the Murge, in Veneto, omnipresent on all Easter tables are the typical vovi and esterasi, hard-boiled eggs, decorated with herbs. de campo and in Trentino Easter dumplings with minced lamb. But we must not forget that due to the crisis linked to prices and the effects of international tensions – concludes Coldiretti – up to 3.1 million Italians were forced to ask for help to eat during these holidays .
