"savory pie" news and stories

While it's not quite as whimsical as chocolate bunnies or colored eggs, "basket cheese" -- a mild cheese that tastes like a combination of ricotta, pressed cottage cheese and very fresh mozzarella -- is a sought-after Easter food among Italian families. The mild cheese is traditionally sliced and eaten with bread, jam or honey for breakfast, or nibbled as an afternoon snack with olive oil, salt and pepper.

"It's really the simplest cheese someone could make," says Louella Hill, cheesemaker at Narragansett Creamery in Providence, R.I., which has been producing hundreds of baskets of cheese for the Easter holiday for the Boston, Providence and New Haven markets. "It's fresh milk, gently coagulated with rennet and placed into baskets to provide the traditional shape. It's meant to be the first flush of milk with the first flush of green grass, and has a very short shelf life -- a few weeks at most."

It's also the traditional cheese of Italian Easter pies, of which there are many variations: Pizza Piena, Pizza Chena, Pastiera Napoletana or Pizza Rustica.