Orthodox Easter; unorthodox recipe

If you're like me, perhaps the only thing you found more surprising this year than how quickly Easter Sunday came around was how quickly it was over.

Happily, however, you can celebrate Easter once again today if you wish. That's because today, for the nearly 300 million adherents of the Eastern Orthodox church, well over a million here in this country, whose religious observances are dictated by the Julian, not the Gregorian calendar, today is Easter Sunday.

From a religious perspective, of course, you might well wish to have a second opportunity to celebrate Easter. It is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar. After all, the Resurrection is what got the Christian Church started. Christmas is a latecomer. It was not even put on the calendar until the fourth century.

Moreover, from a culinary perspective, even nonbelievers might find Orthodox Easter tempting because of the foods that traditionally accompany it. Let's face it. Though families over the years develop their own traditions, in this country at least, in contrast to Thanksgiving where turkey is considered more or less obligatory, there really is no similarly requisite dish at Easter.

For example, as an entree some choose ham, others salmon, and still others lamb. And when it comes to dessert, there really is no standard Easter dessert in this country, not even carrot cake. Some of us even make a different dessert for Easter every year.

This is not the case in the countries where most Orthodox Christians live. There they follow a centuries-old menu of traditional Easter dishes that are essential for the holiday, and nowhere is this more true than with dessert. On the table at any celebration of Eastern Orthodox Easter is a cheesecake that rivals the New York version, which itself has Eastern European roots, called paskha. The very name of the dish is the same as the name for Easter itself, which gives you an idea of just how important it is.

Paskha is made from farmer cheese, or sometimes cottage cheese. It is typically enriched with egg yolks or an egg-based custard and sometimes butter or sour cream, sweetened with sugar, laced with candied fruit and packed into a mold where it sits for several hours to let the whey drain out of it before being turned out onto a serving plate. It is generally not baked like an American cheesecake.

Everything about the dish has symbolic significance. For example, its white color represents the purity of Jesus, it is usually inscribed or decorated with the Cyrillic letters XB, which stand for "Christ is Risen," and being molded in a classic wooden mold called a psochnitsa, sort of a truncated pyramid, its shape represents Christ's tomb. (Early immigrants to this country often substituted a flowerpot.)

Symbolism aside, however, just as Easter is the highest celebration of the Orthodox Church, so is paskha the pinnacle of cheesecakes. A slice or two eaten any time of year can be a religious experience.

Eastern Unorthodox Paskha

Farmer cheese, egg yolks and sugar are whirred together in a food processor to form the basic batter for paskha.

Because it does not require draining and employs golden raisins and crystallized ginger in place of the more traditional candied fruit, this recipe, adapted from one by Suzanne Hamlin in The New York Times, is not strictly conventional, but it is no less divine.

• 2 pounds farmer cheese
• 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 6 hard-cooked egg yolks, crumbled
• 1 and *½ cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup chopped almonds
• Grated zest of one lemon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 2 tablespoons candied ginger, chopped

Combine cheeses, sugar and egg yolks, blending well. Transfer mixture to a food processor, add cream, and process until smooth. (You may need to do this in batches, adding an equal amount of cream to each batch.)

By hand, stir in almonds, lemon zest, vanilla, raisins and ginger. Line a two-quart bowl or clean flowerpot with a double layer of cheesecloth that has been rinsed and squeezed dry, allowing for considerable overhang. Pack cheese mixture into bowl or pot, smooth top, and fold ends of cheesecloth over top. Place a saucer, then a two-pound weight on top and refrigerate overnight. Unmold and serve in slices with poundcake.