What do you eat during Lent? The Catholic religion gives precise prescriptions: for those who practice and believe, it should be a period of restrictions. Forty days of “penance” to be observed to “purify” oneself before Easter, the resurrection of Christ.
What do you eat during Lent
In the common imagination, Lent is a period of total abstention from meat, but also from alcohol, sweets and all fatty and opulent foods. Until the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, it was more or less like this: ecclesiastical rules, among other things, expressly required one to also deprive oneself of eggs and dairy products. Now they are less restrictive. The fourth of the five general precepts of the Church on the subject is clear. Read: «On days established by the Church, abstain from eating meat and observe fasting.
What are the days of Lent when you don’t eat meat
Therefore, first of all, meat is prohibited only on established days: this is the Ash Wednesdaywhich is the day immediately after Carnival, and of Good Friday, in which Christians commemorate the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As for the Holy Saturday, abstention and fasting are only “recommended”. Among the observant, there are those who interpret the rule in a broader sense: during Lent he avoids meat every Friday and deprives himself of particularly expensive foods and alcohol.
What is Lenten fasting
The fasting rule should not be understood in a literal sense either. The church prescribes having only one meal during the day, the midday meal, but does not prevent you from eating something to fill your stomach in the morning and in the evening. Everyone should do it: from the age of 14 you start with abstinence from meat, from 18 to 60 you also continue with fasting. Barring exceptions, for example for health reasons. It’s all written down, on the Code of Canon Law and on the apostolic constitution “Paenitemini” of Pope Paul VI of 1966 (which also marked a small revolution by widening the range of “allowed” foods): rules and precepts for spending the most important period of the year in the most spiritual way possible, symbolically reliving the days that Jesus spent in the desert in abstinence from temptation. Days which, however, as Pope Francis has repeatedly recalled, cannot ignore prayer, almsgiving and good works.
Why you don’t eat meat during Lent (but you do eat fish)
On lean days the rule is therefore that of “carnem-levare”, eliminate the meatan expression from which the term derives not by chance carnival, the period of excesses. Hence the common custom of eat fish. Why not meat and yes fish? The explanations may be different: the assonance between meat and Jesus on the cross, but also the fact that meat – especially red meat – has always been considered an opulent food, therefore not very suitable for a moment of reflection such as Lenten. In its Summa Theologiae Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that red meat gives more pleasure, therefore eliminating it would be a demonstration of greater sacrifice. Pleasure that would also derive from white meat, such as chicken, which is excluded from the permitted foods because it is a warm-blooded animal, unlike fish. Not convincing you? Faith is also this: you believe it or not.
Lent recipes
The Catholic precept has guided the culinary tradition as always: starting from the rule of lean fish, each Italian town, city and region has developed its own recipes in which it is the protagonist. Recipes which, however, in reality, are not always so punitive, but on the contrary. There polenta and herring from the Treviso area was created to be eaten during Lent. It is also Lenten Ligurian lean capon, which in truth is not that lean given that it is made with toasted bread, vegetables, fish interspersed with sauces also made with eggs. It deserves a separate chapter salted cod: poor and very tasty fish, which for Lent is made in many different ways: Vicenza style, cappuccina style (in Friuli), in sauce or fried in Naples.
The list of first courses is also long, although not always with fish: always in Naples they make the scammaro omelette, with a tomato and olive sauce for spaghetti. Spaghetti that Pellegrino Artusi recommended seasoning for Lent with simple ingredients following the rule of the Lenten period, that is nuts, sugar, spices and breadcrumbs. Perhaps an ancestor of Umbrian sweet macaroni, or perhaps not, but still an inviting variation. After all, desserts were also created specifically for Lent: Lenten desserts, for starters, which – like the previous dishes – are not exactly that privative. In short, apparently even in Lent we have allowed ourselves some sins. At least in the throat.
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