This year's Easter menu is almost the same as
last year & the year before. Good Friday means hot cross buns, hot from the oven around 11.30. Dinner is smoked fish pie. I like the predictability of traditional festive eating. It reminds me that we do have food traditions although they are mostly ignored these days & some people are unsure where they came from. Most relate to the old agricultural year so although they are seasonal are not always relevant to modern city dwelling. I do like to bring them out on high days & holidays. I'd like to do more of them.
Saturday was an unbelievably hot Wellington day. Possibly the warmest of the summer & there was no wind in our garden so we dined outdoors, mezze style, for lunch. We had sourdough with carrot hummus, flatbread with leafy greens & goats' cheese, a tomato salad & spicy potatoes with spinach. This has become one of my favourites. It is really quick & would do as part of a spread, a meal on its own or as I did with the leftovers, topped with a poached egg.
Boil some small waxy potatoes & set aside to cool enough that you can handle them. Heat a little oil in a pan & soften a thinly sliced onion. Add a clove of crushed garlic, 1 finely chopped chilli, a knob of grated ginger, 2 tsp garam masala & cook for a couple of minutes. Thickly slice the cooled potatoes into the pan & heat through. Thinly slice a handful of spinach & add it to the pan. Stir through until wilted then season with salt & pepper. If you are not feeding a vegan think about adding a little cream to bind or you could use coconut cream. I like it both with & without cream.
Easter lamb is one of my favourite meals of the year. This year we did a very simple
slow cooked shoulder of lamb served with roasted vegetables and
leeks & greens. We included beetroot leaves with the greens. Keeping with the rosemary theme of the lamb, I roasted carrot, parsnip & swede coated in mustard, rosemary & honey. Cut an appropriate number of vegetables for your table into bite size chunks & toss in a mixture of wholegrain mustard, honey & olive oil. Use 2 tbsp each per 1 kg veg. Season & add rosemary sprigs, then tip everything into a roasting dish & cover with foil. Bake for 30 mins at 180 then uncover & turn up to 200 for another 30-40 mins. You want them tender & beginning to caremelise.
To complete the meal I made a sauce with the 15 crab apples off our trees. This was a variation of something I found on the internet called Sassy Crabapple and Cranberry Chutney. I found there are heaps of recipes called Sassy crabapple and/or cranberry - who can say why? I named mine simply Cranbapple. Use a ratio of 2:1 crab apples to cranberries. We didn't have enough crab apples so I included a couple of windfall apples as well. Peel and core the apples and add the cranberries. For 750g fruit, add grated ginger, a clove of crushed garlic, a cinnamon stick, zest & juice of a lemon, a sprig rosemary, 1/4 cup muscovado sugar, 1 tbsp apple syrup (you could use maple if you have it - use real syrup not maple style syrup). Put it all on the stove and cook until the fruit is soft - 20 mins or so. Remove the cinnamon stick and rosemary before serving.
There were leftovers of the roasted roots. Later in the week I heated them in the microwave, pureed in the processor then mixed with a freshly mashed potato. We cooked up a fresh batch of leeks & greens. A savoy cabbage is a pretty big thing and will stretch to quite a few servings. We served with sausages & cranbapple sauce. There is still a little sauce left - maybe a lamb rack over the weekend?
Sticking with the fruity theme we had apple & blackberry pie & vanilla ice cream for pudding. I had hoped to get fresh blackberries but we had to settle for frozen. If you have a favourite pastry recipe use that or buy good short pastry. We used this
recipe and recommend making pastry with lard. My mother-in-law does this & she is the queen of pastry. Phoebe hopes to follow in her footsteps. Mix slices of apple & blackberries (about 1 kg fruit) with 1 tbsp sugar and 1/2 tsp each nutmeg & cinnamon then turn into a pie dish. Cover with pastry & bake for 40 mins at 200 until golden.
This year's Easter menu is almost the same as last year & the year before. Good Friday means hot cross buns, hot from the oven around 11.30. Dinner is smoked fish pie. I like the predictability of traditional festive eating. It reminds me that we do have food traditions although they are mostly ignored these days & some people are unsure where they came from. Most relate to the old agricultural year so although they are seasonal are not always relevant to modern city dwelling. I do like to bring them out on high days & holidays. I'd like to do more of them.
Saturday was an unbelievably hot Wellington day. Possibly the warmest of the summer & there was no wind in our garden so we dined outdoors, mezze style, for lunch. We had sourdough with carrot hummus, flatbread with leafy greens & goats' cheese, a tomato salad & spicy potatoes with spinach. This has become one of my favourites. It is really quick & would do as part of a spread, a meal on its own or as I did with the leftovers, topped with a poached egg.
Boil some small waxy potatoes & set aside to cool enough that you can handle them. Heat a little oil in a pan & soften a thinly sliced onion. Add a clove of crushed garlic, 1 finely chopped chilli, a knob of grated ginger, 2 tsp garam masala & cook for a couple of minutes. Thickly slice the cooled potatoes into the pan & heat through. Thinly slice a handful of spinach & add it to the pan. Stir through until wilted then season with salt & pepper. If you are not feeding a vegan think about adding a little cream to bind or you could use coconut cream. I like it both with & without cream.
Easter lamb is one of my favourite meals of the year. This year we did a very simple slow cooked shoulder of lamb served with roasted vegetables and leeks & greens. We included beetroot leaves with the greens. Keeping with the rosemary theme of the lamb, I roasted carrot, parsnip & swede coated in mustard, rosemary & honey. Cut an appropriate number of vegetables for your table into bite size chunks & toss in a mixture of wholegrain mustard, honey & olive oil. Use 2 tbsp each per 1 kg veg. Season & add rosemary sprigs, then tip everything into a roasting dish & cover with foil. Bake for 30 mins at 180 then uncover & turn up to 200 for another 30-40 mins. You want them tender & beginning to caremelise.
To complete the meal I made a sauce with the 15 crab apples off our trees. This was a variation of something I found on the internet called Sassy Crabapple and Cranberry Chutney. I found there are heaps of recipes called Sassy crabapple and/or cranberry - who can say why? I named mine simply Cranbapple. Use a ratio of 2:1 crab apples to cranberries. We didn't have enough crab apples so I included a couple of windfall apples as well. Peel and core the apples and add the cranberries. For 750g fruit, add grated ginger, a clove of crushed garlic, a cinnamon stick, zest & juice of a lemon, a sprig rosemary, 1/4 cup muscovado sugar, 1 tbsp apple syrup (you could use maple if you have it - use real syrup not maple style syrup). Put it all on the stove and cook until the fruit is soft - 20 mins or so. Remove the cinnamon stick and rosemary before serving.
There were leftovers of the roasted roots. Later in the week I heated them in the microwave, pureed in the processor then mixed with a freshly mashed potato. We cooked up a fresh batch of leeks & greens. A savoy cabbage is a pretty big thing and will stretch to quite a few servings. We served with sausages & cranbapple sauce. There is still a little sauce left - maybe a lamb rack over the weekend? 
Sticking with the fruity theme we had apple & blackberry pie & vanilla ice cream for pudding. I had hoped to get fresh blackberries but we had to settle for frozen. If you have a favourite pastry recipe use that or buy good short pastry. We used this recipe and recommend making pastry with lard. My mother-in-law does this & she is the queen of pastry. Phoebe hopes to follow in her footsteps. Mix slices of apple & blackberries (about 1 kg fruit) with 1 tbsp sugar and 1/2 tsp each nutmeg & cinnamon then turn into a pie dish. Cover with pastry & bake for 40 mins at 200 until golden.
