Easter Feasting & Fasting

As you can imaging not much actual fasting going on in this house, however, as you all know I am a traditionalist and my Easter follows pretty much a predictable pattern.
Thursday evening I get my Hot Cross Bun dough ready. I use Nigella's recipe from Feast. I always make it the night before and put it in the fridge overnight. Nigella says take it out in the morning and leave it to rise for an hour but this is a little optimistic. I usually take it out around 6.00 a.m. (don't set the alarm or anything, but if you wake up anytime after 4.00 run out to the kitchen & get it out then run back under the covers), then we get up around 7.00 & go for a walk. When we get back it has risen nicely. Then I form the buns & set aside to rise again before I get ready for breakfast. We're usually eating around 9.30 which is a civilised time for breakfast on a holiday. My buns look a little burned in the photo but actually they weren't as my Friday afternoon walking companions can confirm.
Good Friday dinner in our house is always smoked fish pie. This is pretty much as my mother made it. Boil some Agria potatoes & I steam my fish (smoked & some white fish) in the lid of a round casserole in some warm milk on top of the potatoes, covered with the saucepan lid.
Make a white sauce, stir through peas & corn (frozen), a handful of small prawns (I often use frozen), chopped hard boiled eggs and some chopped parsley. Add the flaked fish, pile into a casserole dish & top with your mashed potatoes. This year I added the left over egg wash from the buns to the mash & look how my potato topping puffed up.
Easter Sunday main event is lamb and for a few years now I have been doing Nigella's Slow Cooked Lamb with Beans. We used a leg rather than shoulder this year and it was great. I recommend less beans & less liquid but don't worry if there's too much liquid at the end. Spoon the beans out with a slotted spoon. Cooking lamb in this way is traditional for the Jewish Sabbath. Because it's forbidden to light a fire on the Sabbath Jewish families would prepare this meal the evening before & carry it down to the baker's to cook in their ovens (still hot from baking) overnight. A precursor to the slow cooker. This dish would probably work well in your slow cooker.
We served it with roasted vegetables, spinach, carrots & Brussels sprouts. Try an Easter Monday Bubble & Squeak breakfast by frying up some left over roast veg with sprouts & topping with a poached egg. And the soft melting lamb with beans is perfect in a Shepherd's pie for Monday's dinner.