When we moved to London from Brussels in 1975, I was extremely surprised to discover that Easter eggs arrived by rabbit. In Belgium and France they arrived by church bells. Church bells fall silent for three days from Maundy Thursday - which is the Last Supper - because they are in mourning. They don’t ring again until the resurrection, i.e. Easter morning, when there is an explosion of pealing.
Children were told that at some point in between - I think overnight on the Saturday - the bells grow some wings, whizz to Rome to be blessed, and then whizz back to deliver chocolate and sweets to children’s gardens. They’re back in their rightful place by the time mass starts, and then they just carry on being normal bells for a year.
I was sold on the flying bells as a child, and thus freaked out by the giant rabbit, which I couldn’t make head nor tail of. WHY a rabbit? Had he observed a suitable period of mourning - and if so, what, in his warren? 🤨 Had he been to Rome? Did he have wings, and if not how did he get around all the gardens? Why was there only one of him, and why did he have a furtive, lurking quality? It made zero sense.
Anyhow - spring has sprung! The equinox has happened, which means it’s time to sow seeds - I’ll do a post about that in the week. For now there’s Easter lunch to think about. The clocks go forward next Sunday too, cause for celebration in itself.
When cooking for more people than usual, I am a great believer in just making a big main course and a pudding. I have no qualms about buying the pudding if making it feels like a hassle. I always also buy cheese, for preference one or two big pieces, which feels generous, rather than lots of small pieces, which can feel like everyone’s allowed four centimetres each and that’s it.
I never bother with starters - I don’t know that I even believe in starters outside of restaurants. I’d rather spend the time making a couple of sides, and then putting everything on the table at the same time. It’s nice to sit down to lunch without feeling like you’re going to have to leap up again five minutes later. Things to pick at with drinks make much more sense to me, but since we’ll be having hot cross buns for breakfast I’m not going to bother with that either (leftovers = bun and butter pudding). My point is, keep it simple, it’s so much more enjoyable for everybody.
Lamb is the obvious thing to make. Easter is early this year, which means new season lamb won’t be around until early summer, which means slow-cooking the older lamb that is available now is a good option. I also think strong-tasting lamb can be a hard sell for some people. If that’s a concern, the second and third recipes below have lots of other punchy flavours going on.
I have three lamb recipes on repeat. The first is from Margot Henderson’s brilliant cookbook You’re All Invited, which is out of print - if you see it anywhere, grab it, it’s fantastic. I don’t think she’d mind me reproducing the recipe here given that it exists online. The brackets are mine. You need to make this in the morning - it’s very easy but it wants 7 hours in the oven. It’s absolutely DELICIOUS.
Slow-roast leg of lamb with cracked wheat
Serves 6
1 leg of lamb on the bone, about 1.8-2kg
2 tablespoons olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 cloves of garlic
10 shallots
4 ripe tomatoes
a bunch of fresh rosemary, thyme and bay leaves
rind of 1 lemon, removed in strips
375ml white wine
200ml dry vermouth
250g bulgur wheat
Take the lamb out of the fridge an hour or two before you want to cook it to bring it to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 120C/fan 110C/250F.
Heat the oil in a frying pan or casserole large enough to hold the lamb. Season the leg with salt and pepper and brown it all over (as best as you can) in the oil.
Peel the garlic and shallots, cut the tomatoes in half and tie the herbs into a bundle. Put all of these into a large roasting tray with the lemon rind, and put the lamb in the centre.
Pour over the wine and vermouth. Season well with salt and pepper (again) then cover with foil (sealing the foil round the edges of the tin).
Cook for 6 hours, checking occasionally. If there are not enough juices, add a little water. (If that’s too long, cooking it for 5 hours at 140-150 isn’t a disaster).
Add the bulgur wheat and cook for another hour (bit less at the higher temp, taste to check).
When the lamb is done, remove it to a board. Check the bulgur wheat for seasoning, then spoon it onto a platter with the vegetables. Place the lamb on top and serve it in slices/hunks (it will be falling off the bone) with lightly steamed sprout tops, spring greens or cabbage.
(Here’s how I make those: shallow pan with lid. Vegetables torn or cut to whatever size you like them. Large knob of butter on medium heat. When melted, toss the greens in the butter and salt and pepper them. Add a small amount of water, like an espresso cup’s worth - you only need it to create steam. Put the lid on. Check every five minutes - you know how crunchy or soft you like your greens).
Lamb Raan
Lamb Raan - a sensational Indian-Pakistani take on a roast leg of lamb that is a proper feast - should ideally marinade for up to 72 hours so that the yogurt fully tenderises the meat. My mother and stepfather had a friend who was a Pakistani politician in exile in London and he would sometimes come over and make this. When I first had it, I thought it was the most delicious thing I’d eaten in my whole life.
Meera Sodha’s excellent recipe from Made In India starts the day before - when I make it I try to give it two days in the fridge. One is fine though. If you have any kind of Big Green Egg situation, oh my God, please make it in that. There are precise instructions for a variant using a shoulder here.
Szechuan Pepper Lamb with Aubergine
When I’m not making those two, I make an Ottolenghi recipe I tore out of the Guardian years ago. This is also slow-roasted, so you also need to start early. The recipe, which he suggested as an alternative to turkey for Christmas, is here. Works just as well for the Paschal lamb. It’s really long but don’t let that put you off - it is not at all complicated. Leftovers are really nice stuffed into buns.
Roast lamb, gratin dauphinois
The more trad alternative, and unimprovable in its category. Leg of lamb, stabbed all over, with slivers of garlic stuffed into the slits and a little tuft of rosemary squeezed in (it will stick out, which is fine). I add little pieces of anchovy to the slit, but it’s not essential - just know that the anchovy melts and doesn’t taste of anchovy as such, just of deep salty savouriness. In the oven at 180C for about two hours, depending on weight. Here’s a proper recipe, and here’s one for the potatoes. Do a big green salad on the side. I have to say, a generous dish of potato gratin and a green salad would do me very nicely for lunch, lamb optional.
The fish option
The goodness of cooking fish is that it is so ridiculously easy and quick. It intimidated me for years and I still don’t feel I really know my way around a fish in the way that I know my way around, say, a chicken. It took me ages to not follow a recipe and just improvise. I am also quite squeamish about eyes and fins. But fishmongers exist, so that’s fine. Anyway, what you could do here is a whole fillet of salmon. Here’s mine from last year before it went into the oven.
Ottolenghi’s puttanesca-esque salmon with olive and caper salsa
The recipe is, again, from Ottolenghi, and it’s here. Do not even think of not making the preserved lemon salsa, which is so good you could just sit and eat it with a spoon - I would be tempted to double the quantities. By the way, the way to make greaseproof or baking paper lie flat and not curl on itself is to crumple it under a tap. Uncrumple it, shake off the droplets and smooth it out with your hand - it will stay flat. (PS what do we think of me using my own pics of things I’ve cooked, as above, rather than glossier styled photos from books or websites? I’m quite slapdash - is it offputting?).
Cooking Big Salmon generally
But if you fancy different sorts of flavours, you can anoint or marinate the salmon in anything you like - it doesn’t have to be remotely complicated: olive oil, chopped rosemary and lemon is perfect (with new potatoes, yum, and asparagus except again I think it’s quite early for it, in which case purple sprouting broccoli). All you need to know about cooking a whole fillet of salmon (which will feed about 8) is: it goes in the oven at 200C (normal oven, so 180 fan) for between 15-20 minutes depending on size. Don’t guess at doneness - overcooked fish is awful - just get a knife, pierce the flesh and peer in.
Sea bass for 2 or 4
If you are feeding fewer people, like 2 or 4, make steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion, which always feels like a treat (because it is).
Buy one or two whole sea bass and ask the fishmonger to clean and scale them, and to take off the head if you want.
Peel and chop a knob of ginger into fine strips
Slice 1 spring onion per fish (or more if you want more) into fine strips also
Put most of the ginger and spring onion on the sea bass but save a bit for garnish
Mix equal amounts of soy sauce and sesame oil - about 2 tablespoons per fish - and put over the fish
Steam the fish in a steamer for about 10 minutes but up to 15 for a hefty fish.
Put the fish on a platter and add the bits you’ve saved for the garnish on top. You could heat a little neutral oil in pan until it’s smoking hot at this point, and pour it onto the garnish to make it extra-fragrant.
Rice and Chinese greens on the side, if you like (that website is such a good resource).
The vegetarian option
If I make vegetarian Easter, I make Indian food - everyone’s happy and nobody misses meat, plus if anyone’s vegan that usually works too. I’ll tell you a really good book, actually - it’s Rukmini Iyer’s India Express. She is of course a total superstar thanks to her Roasting Tin series - is there a millennial home in the land without the full set? - but this is my favourite book of hers. It maintains the ease and simplicity of the tin books but is chattier, more complex and goes off in all sorts of interesting directions. Nothing in it is difficult and everything is really, really nice to eat.
If I’m not making Indian food, it’s Anna Jones to the rescue, always and forever. She has a fantastic new book out called Easy Wins, conceived when she was emerging from post natal depression and wanted to simplify her cooking life. It’s full of super-simple recipes that ZING with flavour.
If you’re not in the market for buying new books, both Rukmini Iyer and Anna Jones have lots of recipes on their websites.
If I make rather than buy pudding for next Sunday, it will be Nigella’s perfect, foolproof pavlova - here’s the lemon curd once, which would be perfect in the absence of much in the way of fresh fruit.
If you are as crazed with love for Cadbury’s Mini Eggs as my family is, then I also strongly recommend Jane Lovett’s Chocolate Mini Egg Brownies (she has never written a duff or improbable recipe - do have a roam around her website).
PS Reminder to be careful with chocolate and dogs, particularly in an egg hunt context. Chocolate contains theobromine, which dogs are severely allergic to. The darker the chocolate, the higher the theobromine content and the more poisonous it is. If your dog doesn’t seem himself, don’t wait - just call the vet, especially if he is a small dog.
This is one of my fortnightly food posts and therefore free to read. To access everything else you’ll need a paid subscription, so do consider that, if you’d like. Either way, thank you very much for reading and have a lovely Easter!
I love seeing the dishes you cook, the photos are so much more authentic than those shown in recipe books!
Thank you so much for the IE shoutout! And echoing your other commenters, I love the real life food snaps.
Have you read Angela Hui’s wonderful ‘Takeaway’? I love the bit where she writes about pouring cracklingly hot oil onto the spring onions & ginger on seabass at her family dinners, your recipe reminded me that I must try it out (might divert the two year old enough that she eats fish that wasn’t prepped by the Captain)