Month: April 2010

Happy Easter Monday!

I don’t know about you, but every time its Easter time, it really feels so much like hari raya to me. Moreover seeing the Via Crucis and then the pope giving his sermon with a huge mass of people, the feel is so much like back in Singapore when my family would get ready for Hari Raya, watching the mass prayers being broadcasted.

And then I started to ask Cart :

Me : Why do the people look so sad? Some of them are crying even

Cart : Oh, thats because Jesus is going to die soon.

Anyway, Cart and I spent our weekend, spending time with his family over lunch and of course, devouring chocolate eggs!

If you are ever in Rome around Easter time, you’d see heaps of chocolate eggs being sold. It’s mind boggling the variety of the eggs on sale. There were Hello Kitty eggs, High School Musical, Disney Eggs, Spiderman and practically every other TV show under the Italian sun.

While most of them were the size of footballs wrapped up in decorative wrapper, there were also intricate ones, decorated with coloured sugar pipings.

Cart and I got a couple for our niece and nephew and of course one for ourselves each.

Cart got me the one with the bunny plushie, so that I could keep it for a longer time as opposed to a chocolate bunny. Whereas he had a Marvel Heroes egg.

If you are curious to see what the chocolate eggs look like, here is what to expect.

After the wrapper is taken out, you’d see a chocolate egg, as big as a football, already on its plastic stand. Squeeze it gently and if you’re careful enough, you’d have two neat halves.

And inside, you’d usually have a little toy, depending on the theme of the egg. Cart had this shooting toy.

While my egg contained this.

It was a playing card where the colour of the cover matches my fingernails!

Right now I think I’m getting a chocolate overdose. One egg at home and then another one with my in-laws. Hopefully I don’t get a migraine from eating too much chocolate.

After returning back from Singapore, Cart and I had dinner together with his friends at a place called the ‘Antica Schiacciata Romana’. It was said to be be an authentic Roman styled food and seemed to be very popular, judging by the crowds that they had that night.

While there were quite a variety in their menu, this was the speciality of the restaurant. The schiacciata.

At one glance it looks like a regular pizza. But its not quite. Because in Italian, schiacciare means to squash so these pizzas were actually squashed instead of being shaped in its traditional round shapes.

The schiacciata I has was a Napolitana – tomato based with cheese and some anchovies baked together on top.

As you could see, the schiacciata is thicker compared to a Roman styled pizza.

However, it was very tasty chewing through my food with the different flavours in my mouth. The dough, being allowed to rest for 48 hours turned out very soft, thus it was a delight to eat it.

Initially I was feeling a little disappointed that there were so few anchovies in my food, but eating it makes me realise why there were so few. It was extremely salty! Putting more would be an overkill.

Cart had a pizza with mushrooms and gorgonzola cheese.

I’m not that fond of gorzonzola mainly because of the strong smell and taste but Cart loves it. I could eat a little, but overly cheesy food is too cloying for me.

And then recently, Cart had the schiacciata with artichokes and gorgonzola cheese again.

While I had the one with zucchini blossoms and bottarga.

Bottarga is actually fish eggs, kind of like caviar only dried. If you could see the brown rectangular flakes in the picture up there, those are the bottarga.

And as dubious as how it looked like, it was actually very tasty. I loved it. The delicate taste of the zucchini blossoms mixed with the shapness of the bottarga went very well together.

In any case, despite of how small the schiacciata appeared, it was actually very filling. Indeed, it was easy for me to feel full halfway through eating my schiacciata. But in spite of that, I always have room for dessert.

This is my nutella mousse with pine nuts. It might not look much but its to die for! The soft and creamy nutella is so orgasmically delightful that I feel so happy after eating this.

Cart can keep his Crema Catalana

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

• Did I just ate the worst pizza in Rome?