Easter Cheese

Another Easter food tradition in my family is “cirak” or Easter cheese. This traditional Czechoslovakian Easter delicacy is not really a cheese at all but rather an egg-y, custard-y essential part of most Eastern European tables.

My grandmother, who came from Slovakia as a young woman of about 20 years, always made this to serve with ham and kielbasa at Easter-time. Somehow it fell to me to keep up this tradition, long after both my parents and grandparents are gone.

Cirak is sliced thinly and served cold on sandwiches or with a slice of ham. It doesn’t taste anything like cheese—a surprise to my husband—but the few times I haven’t made it, my brothers have questioned why not.

We still follow another Slovak tradition of having our food baskets blessed at church on Saturday morning before Easter. Baskets are lined with cloth and packed with the foods that will be served for breakfast on Sunday morning or the Easter dinner. These usually include ham or lamb, paska (a traditional Easter bread made with raisins) and dyed eggs. You can read more about the tradition here. It’s a lovely custom that fewer and fewer people participate in; when we take our baskets to church now we linger and remember those members of our parish family who came so regularly and are now no longer with us.

My cirak will be especially delicious made with the eggs that are so golden now that the hens can get outside to eat some grass and look for bugs. Whatever your traditions are, we wish for many blessings on your family.