Swiss chard and ricotta pie "Torta Pasqualina"

Liguria

Cooking time: 40 minutes Difficulty: Ingredients, amounts for 4/6 people: swiss chard/beet greens or artichokes: melted butter: 4 oz flour: 2 lbs 4 oz grated Parmesan cheese: marjoram: olive oil: liquid cream: 3 tablespoons pepper: parsley: 'ricotta' (type of cottage cheese): 1 lb 5 oz salt: eggs: 12

Preparation: Make a pastry with the flour, a little oil, the necessary water and a pinch of salt, and knead all the ingredients together well. Spread out a cloth onto the kitchen table, sprinkle it with flour and line up the pastry dough on it, cut into twenty separate pieces; cover with another cloth, dampened with warm water (to prevent the pastry from drying out) and leave to one side. Clean the Swiss chard/beet greens, wash them, cut them up finely and boil them (if you are using artichokes then remove all the tough leaves, clean as usual, slice up finely and cook in slightly salted boiling water); drain and squeeze out any excess water, place on a large plate and sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and with finely chopped marjoram and parsley. In a mixing bowl, mix together the ricotta cheese, the liquid cream and a pinch of salt. With a rolling pin, roll out 10 of the pieces of pastry into thin layers and lay them, one at a time on top of each other, in a large pie tin greased with oil; make sure that they stick well to the bottom and to the sides, but be careful they do not tear; brush them one by one with oil with a pastry brush, apart from the last one. On this last layer of pastry, which has not been basted with oil, place an even layer of Swiss chard/beet greens (or of artichokes), sprinkle with oil and cover with the ricotta mixture. Make 12 small, spaced out dips in this last layer and break into each one a whole egg, taking care that the yolk does not break, and cover with 10 g (a large knob) of melted butter; season each egg with salt, a little pepper and a teaspoonful of grated Parmesan cheese. Roll out the remaining pieces of pastry into very thin layers; lay them one at a time on top of the ricotta mixture, taking care, before placing the following layer, to blow on them in order to keep them separated from each other; brush with oil. Cut off the edges of the pastry which stick out from the tin, shape them into a rope and lay it around the edge of the pie. Brush the surface of the pie with some oil, pierce in a number of places with the prongs of a fork (to enable the steam to escape during cooking), taking care not to pierce the eggs underneath. Put the pie tin into the oven and leave for 40 minutes at a moderate heat. The torta pasqualina is excellent eaten both hot and cold.