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The dish
What fiadone is
The pastry of the Easter feast.
Fiadone is a parcel of olive-oil pastry and eggs, filled with grated cheese (pecorino and fresh cheese or caciotta) and eggs. In the oven the filling puffs up and rises golden from the cross cut on top.
Around Chieti and in the Majella villages it is mostly savoury and eaten on Easter morning, with cured meats and hard-boiled eggs. In other parts of Abruzzo there is also a sweet version, with ricotta, sugar and lemon zest.
What you need
Ingredients
Makes about 12 fiadoni.
For the pastry
- 500 g plain flour
- 3 eggs
- 80 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 50 ml white wine or milk
- A pinch of salt
For the filling
- 300 g grated pecorino (or half pecorino and half parmesan)
- 300 g grated fresh cheese (caciotta or scamorza)
- 6 eggs
- Black pepper
- Optional: a pinch of baking powder
For brushing
- 1 egg yolk beaten with a little milk
Step by step
Method
- Knead flour, eggs, oil, wine and salt into a smooth, soft dough; let it rest covered for 30 minutes.
- In a bowl beat the eggs with the cheeses and a good grind of pepper: the mixture should be thick.
- Roll the pastry out thinly, about 2 mm, and cut 12–14 cm discs.
- Put two spoonfuls of filling in the centre of each disc and close into a half-moon or parcel, sealing the edges well with a fork.
- Make a cross cut on top, brush with the yolk and place the fiadoni on a lined tray.
- Bake at 180 °C for 25–30 minutes, until puffed and golden. Serve warm or cold.
From our home kitchen
Tips
- Do not overfill: the filling rises in the oven and could leak from the edges.
- For the sweet version use 500 g ricotta, 3 eggs, 100 g sugar and the zest of one lemon.
- They keep for two days in a cool place, covered with a cloth.
Note: fiadone is on the list of festive sweets, but around Chieti it is mostly savoury: two versions of the same Easter pastry.
Gallery
Photos
Tap a photo to enlarge it.
Photo 1: two Abruzzo fiadoni from the Majella area of the province of Chieti, 2017. Credits: Posotivoli (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons, resized; the menu icon is also made from it.
Tradition
History and trivia
Fiadone is one of the oldest dishes of the Abruzzo Easter: the name may come from the Latin «flado», a flatbread, or the Germanic «flado», cake. In spring the sheep gave plenty of milk and the hens laid again: fiadone combined the two gifts of the season.
It was made on Holy Saturday and taken to church to be blessed with the eggs and Easter bread, for Sunday breakfast.
Did you know? a sweet with a similar name, «fiadone», is also made in Corsica, with brocciu cheese: a reminder of old links between Mediterranean cuisines.