Easter in the time of the Coronavirus.

Along the lines of the famous novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of cholera, we find ourselves facing, in spite of ourselves, Easter in the time of Coronavirus.
With the Belpaese in complete lockdown, many Italian families found themselves separate and they managed to celebrate only through technology, connecting with relatives and friends via zoom, facetime or skype.
The forced closure of restaurants, taverns and farmhouses to the public and the limitations imposed by the emergency forced families to make huge stocks of pasta, meat, flour, eggs, yeast and all the necessary ingredients to work in the kitchen.

No exceptions in these occasions as well for Italian people showing off the culinary art learned in years of living together with parents, grandparents and relatives. And this is how, on tradition tables, we can see the pastiera and casatiello from Naples, the baked pasta from Emilia Romagna, the typical lamb from Rome and so on.
The kitchen, as often happens, puts everyone together and works as a calming, dampening, with its colors and flavors, every bit of melancholy and sadness that we know well in these days.

What about italians in Hong Kong? How did the Italian community organize, far from its habits and traditions?

The restrictions on gatherings, social distancing and the impossibility
of meeting in a restaurant for more than four people, have created the right atmosphere to meet up with friends at home, in the privacy of their (albeit small) apartments and finally enjoy a sunny day that we haven’t been seeing for a long time.
Here too, far from the mother country, we have created the right mood thanks to our culinary history, traditions and happiness that distinguishes us. Here too there were plenty of laid tables, grandmother recipes, laughter, glasses of wine and Italian music. And even here, despite ten thousand kilometers of distance, we feel Italian more than ever.