Torta pascualina arrived in Uruguay with Ligurian immigrants, whose torta pasqualina was an Easter pie of greens and eggs. In Montevideo and across the River Plate it settled into everyday life as a pie of acelga, Swiss chard, bound with egg and grated cheese and baked between two crusts. Its signature is the eggs: cooks make hollows in the filling and either crack in raw eggs or tuck in hard cooked ones, so that a cut slice shows a neat oval of white and yolk in the green, like a cross section of a well planned garden.

It is served warm, at room temperature or cold, which makes it among the most useful things a race host can own. Bake it the evening before, slice it during the anthem and forget about the kitchen until the podium.

The hard cooked eggs

Ingredients

• 5 large eggs

The chard filling

Ingredients

• 2 large bunches (about 2 lb, 900 g) Swiss chard (acelga)
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup (70 g) grated Parmesan
• 1 cup (115 g) shredded mozzarella
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Assembling and baking

Ingredients

• 2 refrigerated rolled pie crusts or sheets of puff pastry
• 1 teaspoon butter or oil
• 1 large egg

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