28 Mar 2024
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, is a bit more relaxed about her Easter Sunday cooking…
Other than the mighty and all-consuming domination by chocolate that I ritualistically submit to, the thing I love most about Easter is how much springtime promise there is this time of year. The yellow dazzle of daffodils everywhere; the smell of cut grass; the birds chirping away at first light (that one can be a bit much on a weekend, actually)…
Just the other day, my friend Lianne sent me a photo of her baby rabbits and I was immediately catapulted into all things Easter, and a feeling that I’m surrounded by new life and fresh beginnings. The bunnies were, in fact, the catalyst for a sudden and unexpected bout of spring cleaning and the resultant sense of wellbeing. I’ve included the photo herewith, so you too can be similarly inspired. You’re welcome.
In a culinary context, Easter has the advantage of being bound by far more relaxed kitchen rules than Christmas.
Rather than the unyielding requirement to have the entire extended family round a table, each with their own very specific Christmas food non-negotiables, we tend to have slightly looser expectations of our Easter Sunday meal.
This year, for example, I’m simply going to crush black peppercorns in my pestle and mortar along with thyme, flaky salt, garlic and lemon zest, then rub it all over a side of salmon. I love the speckling on the pink flesh that emerges from the oven after baking, and the heady garlickiness which is offset by a spoonful of cooling crème fraîche.
This makes for a lighter meal than other more typical roasts, which is tremendously helpful given we will no doubt have eaten an entire ‘colomba di Pasqua’ for breakfast on Easter Day, which has been the tradition in my family since before I was born.
For those of you unfamiliar with colomba di Pasqua, which translates literally as ‘Easter dove’, it’s an Italian cake festooned with almonds and sugary sprinkles, and shaped like a dove. Roughly. A very stylised dove, let’s say.
Inside, candied peel studs the soft, yolk-enriched cake and Easter just isn’t Easter if you haven’t indulged in a couple of slices at least, and then been admonished for picking almonds from the top of the remaining cake, essentially robbing from future slices. (The almonds somehow taste better this way, though the future slice obviously doesn’t.)
My foodie-friend, Leisha, makes a leg of lamb most Easters. I’ve been lucky enough to eat her roast lamb in the past and it’s just delicious. She makes a marinade using yoghurt and whatever spices take her fancy, often ground coriander, cumin, turmeric and cinnamon. The result is glorious, and a welcome departure from the traditional garlic-and-herbs roast lamb.
Because Easter offers more leeway for experimentation, I have been dabbling with some homemade Easter eggs, with mixed success.
Tempering chocolate is no mean feat and also quite dull when you’re on your sixth batch, but vital for achieving the required shine.
Pouring the tempered chocolate into the half-egg mould and tipping it in all directions to cover everywhere is great fun, but unmoulding the set shell without it cracking is the stuff of nightmares. Similarly, sealing the two halves together with some melted chocolate is straightforward, but doing so without leaving greasy fingerprints all over your lustrous egg is categorically not. Cue the nylon gloves.
The most creative part of the process is without doubt the decoration. I tried using cacao nibs and sprinkles of various kinds, all with questionable success, but found edible metallic dust far more amenable. It’s readily available in the supermarket in gold and silver, but more exciting colours are available online or in specialist shops.
You spray, paint or daub the dust directly onto the inside of the egg mould before adding the tempered chocolate. It holds in place more reliably than sprinkles.
But there’s nonetheless an element of surprise, because you don’t know how the dust will be carried by the chocolate that gets poured in. What is guaranteed, however, is that the arty splodging and swirling is always beautiful despite being random, and the whole process is well worth the effort. But only because you then get to eat it, of course.
