Food Daily

Easter time marks the march towards the brighter vegetables that I miss over winter: broad beans, asparagus and the first wild shoots feel like the first signs of spring. But the reality is that these things often take longer to arrive than we would like. If I’m left waiting for the next season’s produce, I eat greenly in a different way.

As a teenager, I was presented with a salad the memory of which has remained with me ever since. A friend of my mother’s, Irma, hosted us in a 17th-century cowshed, meticulously refitted and nestled in the Swiss Alps. The dish was simple: lamb’s lettuce (or mâche), raw carrot and hard-boiled egg with spicy vinaigrette. She said it was a Swiss classic and it sat in her repertoire of precisely delicious potato rostis, fondues and legendary breakfasts with hazelnut yogurt and Alpine cheeses. The salad epitomised freshness.

At this time of year, I am as likely to cook a salad leaf as eat it raw; use flavours such as my butter-laced anchovy and pine nut sauce to coat the vegetables I find; turn to warmth one way or another, be it in the inclusion of toasted breadcrumbs to a vegetable dish or adding a still-warm boiled egg to a salad.

It is in the spirit of Irma that these recipes have been written, with memories of streaming sun lighting the snow peaks outside, soft salads and spring flowers.

Lamb’s lettuce salad

The only cooking required here is to boil the eggs but this clever, delicate salad is more than the sum of its parts.

Serves 4
eggs 3 of the best you can get
lamb’s lettuce 200g
garlic ¼ clove
salt
herb and wine vinegar 1 tbsp
extra virgin olive oil 3 tbsp
carrot 1

Hard boil the eggs. Wash the leaves, give them a shake or gentle spin and leave them on a clean towel on the bench to dry. Crush the garlic with a pinch of salt and stir it into 1 tbsp vinegar and 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil. Peel the carrot and slice it thinly on the bias and then slice again into matchsticks. Carefully mix the leaves and carrot with the dressing and serve with the sliced eggs.

Pasta mista with cod and peas

Mixed pasta can be bought from Italian delis; or better yet, can be made using up all the little bits of leftovers in the packets lining your cupboard, snapping any longer shapes into shorter pieces. If you have a good supplier, feel free to use actual salt cod rather than this quick version of it, soaking the fish for several days in regular changes of water. But I really like this fresher version as well.

Serves 2
sea salt
cod 200g
onion 1, small
garlic 1 clove
chilli ½, dried
extra virgin olive oil a glug
parsley 4 sprigs
sage 3 leaves
lemon peel 3 strips
peas 250g (can be frozen)
pasta mista 150g

Liberally salt the cod and leave it unwrapped in the fridge overnight or up to 24 hours. Then rinse very well under cold water. The fish will feel pleasingly firm to the touch.

Sweat the onion, garlic and chilli in a glug of olive oil over a medium temperature for about 7 minutes. Chop some of the parsley stalks and sage and add them with the lemon peel. After a few minutes more, add the peas and cod, turn up the heat, stir once and add water to cover. Simmer for 15 minutes and add the pasta. Cover with more boiling water so all the pieces are submerged – but not drowning.

Cook, stirring all the while, adding more water when necessary until the pasta is al dente and the sauce thicker. Add more chopped parsley and serve with extra olive oil.

Artichokes and lettuce

Serves 4
artichokes 6
lemon 1
breadcrumbs 4 tbsp
olive oil 2 tbsp, plus some for crumbs
red onion ½
garlic 2 cloves
salt a pinch
chilli 1 dried
lettuce 1, robust, such as Romaine
dried wild oregano 2 tbsp

Remove the tough outer leaves from the artichokes and trim the tops. Trim the stalks and peel them and the base of the artichokes. Cut in half and use a teaspoon to remove the choke. Cut each half into 4. Cut the lemon in half and rub on the artichokes if you care about them discolouring.

Heat the oven or gill. Coat the breadcrumbs with some oil and toast until golden.

Peel and slice the onion and garlic. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a wide pan and sweat them with a pinch of salt and the chilli. When soft, add the artichokes and continue to cook over a medium heat, stirring. Wash and slice the lettuce in half and then each half into 6. Once the artichokes are mostly cooked add the lettuce, the oregano and a squeeze of lemon.

Cook stirring for 5 minutes and serve at once with the breadcrumbs.

Asparagus and broccoli with pine nuts and porcini

This dish reflects a seasonal crossover. If it’s too early, don’t buy asparagus but use carrots or Swiss chard instead.

For the sauce
dried porcini 10g
olive oil a little
celery 1 stick with leaves cut into pieces
onion 2 thin slices
garlic 1 clove, sliced
pine nuts 15g
white wine 1 glass
anchovy fillets 2
butter 40g

asparagus 1 bunch
sprouting broccoli 200g

Soak the dried porcini in a cup of boiling water for 30 minutes. In a small pan heat a little olive oil and add the celery, onion and garlic.

Fry without colouring for about 7 minutes. Add the pine nuts and porcini and cook a moment longer before adding the porcini water, omitting any dust that may be at the bottom of the cup.

Cook until dry again and then add the wine. Reduce by half and then add the anchovies and butter in 2 pieces and whizz with a stick blender or food processor. Adjust the seasoning.

Boil the asparagus and broccoli together in salted water.

Dress with a little olive oil and serve with the warm sauce.

Joe Trivelli is joint head chef at the River Café. Nigel Slater returns in two weeks

Sometimes called kulich, but we call it paska in the south, this is a slightly bonkers cousin of the Italian panettone, which I cook in cleaned-out tomato tins. Don’t be put off by the 12‑hour proving for the mashed potato starter – it adds a beautiful texture. We make A LOT of these during Easter, which is our biggest religious holiday.

Ukrainian Easter bread

Makes 3x 800g breads
For the starter
3 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 litre cold water
3 tbsp plain flour

For the dough
250ml warm milk
15g fresh yeast or 7g dried active yeast
4 egg yolks, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
1kg plain flour
Sunflower oil
100g sultanas

For the glaze
175g icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp water
Hundreds and thousands (optional)

1 For the starter, put the potatoes in a saucepan, cover with the water and bring to the boil. Cook for 15 minutes, or until quite soft.

2 Pour away all but 200ml of the cooking water and mash the potatoes with the remaining liquid.

3 Add the flour and mix well. Cover and leave in a warm place for 12 hours.

4 To make the dough, add the milk (make sure it’s warm but not hot) and the yeast to the starter and mix well.

5 Beat the egg yolks and the sugar in a large bowl with an electric whisk until foamy.

6 Fold the milk and yeast mixture into the egg mixture. Gradually sift in and mix in the flour – the dough should be firm, but not bouncy. Cover the dough with a clean tea towel and leave to raise in a warm place for about an hour.

7 Moisten your hands with some sunflower oil and knead the dough for about 15 minutes. Scatter the sultanas on your work surface and knead them into the dough.

8 Now, divide the dough into 4 pieces. Oil three cleaned 800g tomato tins and half fill them with the dough. Leave to prove in a warm place for 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.

9 Put the tins on a baking tray and bake for 40-45 minutes on the lowest shelf of the oven. Let the bread cool fully in the tins, then run a palette knife around the edges to help free them.

10 To make the glaze, whisk the icing sugar, vanilla extract and water together in a bowl, then brush over the top of the breads, letting it drip along the sides. Decorate with hundreds and thousands, if you like.

This is an extract from Olia Hercules’s first book, Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and Beyond. Her second book, Kaukasis the Cookbook, will be published in August (both on Mitchell Beazley); octopusbooks.co.uk

Europudding: more Easter treats we’d like to try

The Finnish mämmi (called memma in Sweden) is a rye malt casserole, traditionally baked and available in birch bark baskets. It’s scented with bitter orange and served with cream and sugar or vanilla ice-cream. Magnus Nilsson’s incomparable Nordic Cookbook lists a recipe for it, as well as for a Finnish version of the Russian Orthodox Easter Sunday dessert: pasha or pashka, an ancient extravaganza of dried fruit, honey, nuts and curd cheese, moulded into a mound and inscribed with the first two Cyrillic letters, Х and р, of the Easter greeting, Христос βоскресе: Christ is risen.

Breads

Across Eastern Europe, from Georgia to Bulgaria, pashka is served with slices of kulich, or paska, as it’s known in southern Ukraine – in her first book Mamushka, Olia Hercules makes these puffy buns popping out of cleaned tomato tins, smothered in white icing and hundreds and thousands. The Greek tsourecki is a braided loaf, garnished with flaked almonds: find an excellent recipe in Rebecca Seal’s The Islands of Greece. And then you’ve got the sweetened brioche-like bite of the Italian pane di Pascua (replete with a coloured egg nestled in its middle), the Portuguese folar de pascoa (flavoured with caramel, aniseed and cinnamon)
the Croatian pinca (closer to our hot cross buns with a cross sliced into the dough before baking) and the German Osterbrot. Luisa Weiss, in Classic German Baking, makes bunny rolls with currant eyes for Easter morning. She also does an intriguing Poschweck loaf from Aachen, into which whole sugar cubes are baked. Can someone please send us one?

Cakes

Given the beauty that is the semlor lent bun – a wisp of a bun filled with sweetened cardamom cream – we are eager to try the Scandi cakes that follow over Easter: many Swedes opt for the Påskens chokladtårta while Trine Hahnemann tends towards apricot and citrus fruit in her Danish classic, påskekage, decorated with dainty marzipan leaves. Lastly, and as sonorously an ode to the springtime that Easter could ever usher in, the Alsatian lammele or agneau pascal: a beautifully airy génoise baked in the two halves of a lamb-shaped mould, and dusted with icing sugar. We would happily host this dinky critter in the middle of our Easter spread.

Last Easter I went to my first egg-painting party. We sat around a table, blew the yolks and whites from thir shells until the eggs were satisfying little hollows, and we carefully painted them. I went for a Faberge creation in bright pastels; others were the faces of heavy-metal icons and cartoon characters. We hung them on some blossom branches and felt quite pleased with ourselves. The symbolism of it all struck me.

Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life, of promise and of hope and – whether you celebrate Easter or not – we all need a little of that just now. As a child, I waited and waited for this time of year, for the flowers to come out, to play outside. There is an optimism around that is worthy of celebration.

These recipes make a hero of the egg; they show it off in all its sunny-yolked glory. First, a tart that will sit at the middle of my Easter table. As tarts go, this is quick to make. It unashamedly uses good shop-bought puff pastry, though a homemade flaky pastry would certainly elevate it to another level if you had the time. It is a wash of green and yellow, using the first baby vegetables and broad beans (there are good Spanish ones in the shops now). I make this tart all through spring and summer, varying the vegetables as different things come into season – peas and leeks one time, asparagus and broad beans the next.

Then there are the muffins. If there is a recipe that makes more of an egg, then I am yet to find it. These are based on a muffin I ate at a brilliant bakery called Craftsman and Wolves in the Mission district of San Francisco. A whole egg hidden inside, the yolk still runny, it’s the perfect breakfast muffin: a little bite from polenta, a hit of chilli, some brightness from the dill. They also travel well to a picnic. But be sure to eat them hot straight from the oven if you want a runny yolk, as the yolk will set a little as they sit.

As eggs are the main event in both of these recipes, I’d encourage you to buy the very best ones you can get your hands on. For me, that means good organic eggs with paint-pot yellow yolks.

Sunny egg muffins

This is a recipe you will need to follow closely if you are after a runny egg. You will need to use a large, deep, nonstick large muffin or yorkshire pudding tin – normal muffin tins are too small. I used this one.

Makes 6 large muffins
6 medium eggs, at room temperature, for boiling
100g fine polenta
180g white spelt flour
1 tsp flaky salt (smoked works well)
1 tbsp baking powder
50g mature cheddar cheese, coarsely grated
4 spring onions, finely sliced
A small bunch of dill, finely chopped
¼ tsp dried chilli flakes
240ml buttermilk
90ml olive oil, plus a little extra for greasing
2 eggs

1 First, boil your eggs. Bring a large pan of water to a rapid boil, and lower in the eggs. Boil for exactly 4 minutes – not a second more. Remove from the pan and immerse into ice-cold water, then chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

2 Meanwhile, get your muffin mix ready. In one bowl, mix together the polenta, spelt flour, salt, baking powder, grated cheese, spring onions, dill and chilli flakes.

3 In a jug, mix together the buttermilk, olive oil and eggs.

4 When you’re ready to bake the muffins, preheat your oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Grease the moulds with a little oil. Get your eggs out of the fridge and peel them really, really carefully, putting them on a couple of sheets of kitchen roll to stop them rolling away.

5 Tip your buttermilk mix into your flour bowl and stir gently, not worrying too much about any lumps. Put a couple of tablespoons of the muffin batter into each mould, then very gently add an egg on top. Carefully add the rest of the batter so that you don’t squash the eggs, and immediately bake for 20 minutes – again, not a second longer.

6 Remove the muffins from the oven and take each one carefully out of its mould and transfer them to a cooling rack. Using a sharp knife, cut right through the middle of the muffin and pat yourself on the back for achieving a perfect soft yolk.

Easter egg and spring veg tart (main picture)

I used ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry here, but if you buy a block or make your own, then roll it out to just bigger than an A4 piece of paper, to about 2-3mm thick. This tart is best eaten straight out of the oven. The eggs are best cracked over at the last minute, too, so if you want to get ahead, do so with everything but the eggs until you’re ready to cook it. I like to double pod my broad beans, but if you buy baby ones they will be sweet and you might not need to. I serve this with a simple lemon-dressed green salad and some buttered new potatoes.

Serves 4

5 eggs, fridge-cold
320g puff pastry (I used a sheet of ready-rolled all-butter)
6 spring onions, trimmed and cleaned
6 baby courgettes, quartered lengthways
Olive oil
100g baby broad beans
150g creme fraiche
1 heaped tbsp dijon mustard
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper
To finish: herbs, hazelnuts, seeds of your choice

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Crack one of the eggs into a cup with a big pinch of salt, beat well and leave to one side. Fill and boil the kettle.

2 Spread your puff pastry out on to a cold baking tray and trim off 1cm from each side and set aside. Working quickly, prick the base all over with a fork, and lightly brush with the beaten egg. Add the trimmed edges back on top of the pastry around the edges you cut them from, forming a border, and egg-wash those too.

3 Put the spring onions and baby courgettes on to a baking tray, drizzle with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake, along with the puff-pastry case, for 20-25 minutes until the veg is golden and the pastry is really crisp.

4 Meanwhile, pour a little boiling water over the baby broad beans, allow them to cool, then pop each one out of its tough outer skin, leaving the bright-green bean inside.

5 As soon as the pastry comes out of the oven, press down on the middle rectangle of the base (which will have puffed up a little), leaving yourself a nice border around the outside.

6 Mix the creme fraiche with the mustard, add a little salt and pepper and spread it over the crisp pastry, keeping it within the border.

7 Arrange the courgettes and spring onions over the base, then make four little spaces to crack the eggs into. Stop here if you are preparing the tart in advance and cover and keep it in the fridge.

8 When you are nearly ready to eat, take the eggs out of the fridge and really carefully crack each one on to a saucer, then pick up the whole egg, leaving behind as much of the watery white as you can. Gently place each egg in the little wells, sprinkle over the broad beans and bake for 20 minutes, until the egg whites are set and the yolks are still a little soft.

9 Remove the tart from the oven, grate over the lemon zest and scatter over the hazelnuts or toppings of your choice.

• This article was edited on 11 April to add a picture of the Sunny Egg Muffin to the recipe.

Some of you, I know, have had your fill of salted caramel. You’re sick of finding it in everything from green tea to cider, still unconvinced by the idea of a savoury sweet, and that famous image of Nigella dripping head to toe in sugary, buttery saline goodness leaves you utterly cold. And I’m sorry for your loss, really I am. Because, to the rest of us, the attractions are all too clear: rich and buttery, with an intense caramel sweetness shot through with maritime undercurrents, it’s hard to think of many things that wouldn’t be improved by a dollop of the stuff. Certainly, once I had roasted a duck with miso caramel, redcurrant jelly began to look a little passe.

There are limits of course – potato crisps being one of them – but adding salted caramel to a chocolate brownie, squidgy, dark and bittersweet, feels like what might be termed in the brownie’s American homeland, a “no brainer”, assuming you concede there’s any room for improvement. Perhaps we can agree on the fact that a salted caramel brownie is not necessarily better than the ordinary kind, but it’s certainly no worse. Which makes it pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned. (Note that this is also a good way to use up excess Easter chocolate, should such a thing exist in your household, although you may wish to adjust the sugar content depending on the sweetness of the stuff available.)

The caramel

This column has covered the basics of both brownies and salted caramel before, but together they’re a rather different proposition: what works as a standalone sauce does not necessarily have the right qualities for the best supporting actor role in a tray bake. If melting sugar makes you nervous, you can, of course, use ready-made caramel – Jane Hornby in BBC Good Food beats sea salt into the Carnation tinned variety, and Emily Pahl melts caramel sweets into double cream – but if you make it yourself, then you can make it perfect. For me, that means using sour cream, as New York bakers Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito suggest, rather than Edd Kimber or Deb Perelman’s double cream. Sour cream gives the caramel a subtle tangy flavour that helps to balance the richness of the sugar and butter in there, too. I’m going to base my caramel on Perelman’s, however, which uses less cream than some of the others to make it less soft, but still manages, somewhat miraculously, to impress with its silky thickness.

Lewis and Poliafito put corn syrup in their caramel, I think to minimise the possibility of it crystallising in the pan, but as long as you allow the sugar enough time to melt, this shouldn’t be a problem. If you are worried, however, then a spoonful of the more readily available golden syrup will work just as well.

The brownie

Having, in the infancy of this column, laboured hard over my brownie recipe, I’m pretty pleased with it, even seven years on – but, having tasted five alternatives in the course of this week’s research, I have to concede it could do with a bit of tweaking to complement the all-new salted caramel filling. That said, I’m still of the school that prefers a dense, but not downright fudgy texture – both Perelman and Lewis and Poliafito’s versions, although as delicious as anything calling itself a salted caramel brownie can be, are too solid to take any more richness in the form of extra caramel. Beating the mixture until light and airy, as Kimber recommends, is still my own favoured technique and I’m also, like Nigel Slater, in defiance of many brownie aficionados, going to add a little baking powder, too.

To maintain as much contrast between the two flavours as possible, my recipe will use ordinary white or golden sugar rather than going down the toffeeish muscovado route, and there won’t be any caramel in the batter itself, as in Hornby’s recipe, for the same reason. Indeed, Perelman observes that many salted caramel brownies are “achingly sweet, as if little consideration was given to the fact that dousing an already-sweet brownie with caramel sauce might cause teeth to hurt/dentists to buy new vacation homes”. Like her, I’ll be reducing the amount of sugar in the batter to compensate, but, more importantly, I’ll be using the darkest chocolate I can find.

The chocolate

Hornby reckons that “for best results, it’s important to use chocolate with the right mix of 70% and 50% cocoa solids [to] help to give the brownies their rich, fudgy texture”. Lewis and Poliafito call for a cocoa content of between 60% and 72%; Kimber is roughly the same at between 65% and 75%; and Emily Pahl of the She Makes and Bakes blog, whose recipe Nigella described in 2012 as the “best brownies I ever made”, calls for “bittersweet”, which, the internet informs me, is almost always more than 50%, but frequently around 70%. Perelman, however, goes the whole hog, and uses unsweetened chocolate, which has historically been more widely available in the US than here, but is now relatively easy to find in large supermarkets. I’m expecting the results to be unpalatably bitter, but, actually, testers love them, on the basis that the intense cocoa flavour helps to counter the sweet creaminess of the caramel. (This also renders the cocoa powder in my original recipe surplus to requirements, and reducing the ingredient count always makes me happy.)

Allowing the melted chocolate to cool slightly before adding it to the batter, as Kimber recommends, is a very sensible idea to avoid the risk of any cooking occurring.

The assembly

Tip salted caramel sauce into brownie batter and bake it to witness the miraculous case of the disappearing caramel – it melts into the batter as it cooks, which may taste nice, but disappoints anyone hoping for gooey strands of molten caramel.

I try several tactics in the hope of remedying this problem. Kimber and Hornby’s recipes call for me to layer the caramel between two layers of the batter, almost as if I’m filling a sandwich cake. Kimber’s proves hard to spread, and, although Hornby’s tactic of distributing the caramel in a series of thick lines, rather than a continuous sheet, is easier to effect, neither results in pockets of caramel in the finished brownie. Lewis and Poliafito simply pour it on top, like icing, which isn’t popular with my testers – there should be some mingling between the two . Pahl gets around the mingling problem by adding the caramel to a layer of half-baked brownie and then topping it with the remaining batter, but this simply results in an overbaked base – the caramel has still largely melted into the batter above.

I conclude, in a sugar-filled pit of despair, that to have any chance of success, the caramel must be thicker than average, and, crucially, as Perelman observes, it must be solid, in pieces “cold and big enough that they take longer to disappear into the the batter than the batter takes to bake”. She freezes hers, but I find this too effective, leaving me with chunks of solid toffee when I had hoped for oozing caramel. Chilling until soft and chewy, but not actually hard, seems like the better option.

The extras

Perelman, Lewis and Poliafito and Kimber all add vanilla to the batter, which, although not absolutely necessary, works very well with the flavour of the caramel. Also very much optional, but a great improvement as far as I’m concerned, is a sprinkling of toasted nuts to add a little crunch to proceedings. Nuts and caramel, and nuts and brownies are both classic combinations, so, although none of the recipes I try includes them, to leave them out seems like a dereliction of gastronomic duty. I favour pecans, but peanuts, almonds or even walnuts would work – or indeed none of the above, as you prefer. They will be delicious, whatever you add.

Makes 25

200g very dark chocolate, as dark as you can find
250g unsalted butter
250g caster sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
120g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
100g pecans, or nuts of your choice (optional)

For the caramel

110g caster sugar
55g butter
4 tbsp sour cream
½ tsp flaky salt

Start by making the caramel. Line a plate or shallow bowl with lightly greased baking parchment. Melt the sugar in a medium pan over a medium-high heat until a rich amber, stirring occasionally to break up chunks. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, followed by the cream and salt, until melted. Pour on to the lined plate and chill or freeze until solid, but still soft enough to scoop (about 40-55 minutes).

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over, but not touching, a pan of simmering water (or use a microwave). Allow to cool slightly, stirring occasionally. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4, and line a 23x23cm baking tin with baking parchment. Toast the nuts, if using, in a dry pan until fragrant, then roughly chop.

Once the caramel is almost ready, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. With the mixer still running, gradually add the eggs, beating well between each addition to ensure they are thoroughly incorporated before pouring in any more. Leave mixing on a high speed for 5 minutes until the batter has a silky sheen, and has increased in volume.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and gently fold in the melted chocolate and vanilla with a large metal spoon, followed by the sifted flour, baking powder, salt and nuts.

Spoon half the mixture into the tin and make about 8 small divots on its surface then spoon generous blobs of caramel into them, reserving a quarter for the top. Spoon on the rest of the batter. Dot the remaining caramel over the top and bake for 30 minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time, prepare a sink with enough iced water to come halfway up the side of the tin.

Test the brownies with a skewer; it should come out sticky, but not coated with raw mixture. If it does, put it back into the oven for another 3 minutes, then test again. When ready, carefully lower the tin into the sink, then allow to cool before cutting into pieces and devouring.

Salted caramel brownies: too much of a good thing, or all your dreams come true? And is there anything that can’t be improved with the addition of salted caramel?

• This article was amended on 19 April 2017 to change the lead picture.

Easter outstrips even Christmas in importance in the Italian calendar. Carnevale marks the start of 40 days’ anticipation that culminates in a feast the like of which no amount of Lenten abstinence could prepare you for. My favourite centred on a multi-coloured chocolate bunny almost as tall as me.

Other popular treats are torta pasqualina filled with spinach and eggs, the “dove” shaped colomba, and many, many different types of fried sweet dough. There are perhaps even more Easter traditions in Italy than there are small towns. Almost all are delicious, but none especially light.

The River Café is always open on Easter Sunday, so instead my family sits down together on Saturday night or Easter Monday when we eat something special. Kid and goat is becoming easier to find at the butchers, so I included it. Rabbit, another favourite at our table, might also do. Cooked with wild garlic, olives and prosciutto, it stands up by itself

Usually I make pastiera at Easter, the ancient grain, candied fruit and ricotta tart from Naples scented with rosewater. It has a great tradition and pedigree, but this year it inspired a frivolous chocolate number instead. It is as densely moreish as the almond rhubarb pudding is daintily pretty, thus something for everyone. A recipe for a happy family gathering.

Traditional Easter roast with potatoes

This is very straightforward, delicious and, crucially, takes minimal effort. Cooking the meat uncovered and dry helps retain a welcome chew so while it is soft it doesn’t fall to pieces.

Serves 6
kid or lamb shoulder, off the bone, 1.5 kg
garlic 10 cloves, crushed
lemon 1
chilli 1, dried, crushed
rosemary
oregano or marjoram dried
fennel seeds 1 tbsp
potatoes 1.5 kg
olive oil
salt

Well ahead, preferably the day before, cut the meat into chunks, say eight. Cut the lemon into eighths and squeeze on to the meat adding the crushed garlic, chilli, loads of rosemary needles, a good pinch of oregano and the fennel seeds. Peel the potatoes, cut into 3cm chunks and mix with salt and a glug of oil. Leave the meat and potatoes to marinate.

Heat the oven to 120C/gas mark 6 and remove the potatoes from the meat. Roast uncovered, in a heavy tin with sides, for 90 minutes. Turn the oven up to 230C/gas mark 8 and turn the meat over. After 20 minutes cautiously remove some of the fat with a ladle, add the potatoes before turning over the meat again. Cook until the potatoes are golden – usually about another 40 minutes.

Rabbit with wild garlic

This is full of the joys of spring. Adding the ingredients in stages keeps the dish fresh despite its long braising. If you can’t find wild garlic use regular, but add it early.

Serves 6
rabbit 1, farmed, jointed, about 1.5 kg
onion 1, small
celery stick 1
olive oil
parsley a few sprigs
wild garlic 15 leaves, or 6 peeled garlic cloves
carrots 5
black olives such as taggiasche, a handful
broad beans 500g, fresh, shelled (optional)
prosciutto 6 slices
white wine 200ml
salt and pepper

Thinly slice the onion and celery. Season the rabbit well and place, with a couple of tbsp of olive oil in a large frying pan. Scatter over the onion, celery, a few of the parsley sprigs, (the whole garlic cloves if using) and cover. I do this with baking paper and tin foil as I don’t have a large enough lid. Place over a medium heat until you smell it cooking – about 5 minutes – then turn down to the lowest heat and cook for 90 minutes, removing the lid and turning after 40 minutes. If the pan is dry, add a splash of water.

Peel the carrots, cut into small pieces and add to the pan with the olives and broad beans. Cover with the prosciutto, then the lid and cook for another 20 minutes. Remove the lid, add the white wine, more parsley and the garlic leaves and increase the heat. Cook till the wine is almost gone. Add fresh pepper before serving.

Whole grain and chocolate tart

Pearled grain means that the hard husk has been polished and so is better suited to the purpose here.

Serves 10
For the pastry:
butter 150g, soft
wholemeal spelt flour 175g
white spelt flour 175g
icing sugar 100g
baking powder 1 tsp
egg 1
egg yolk 1

For the filling:
pearled whole spelt 80g
milk 600ml
cinnamon 1 stick
lemon peel from 1 lemon, shredded
dark chocolate 200g
caster sugar 80g
plain flour 50g
eggs 3, separated
salt

Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour, baking powder and icing sugar to resemble crumbs. Then combine the egg and bring together to form a dough. Wrap and rest for at least an hour.

Soak the grain for several hours. Bring the grain and milk to the boil in a heavy pan with the cinnamon stick and lemon peel. Simmer on a low heat until cooked and thick. This may take as long as 2½ hours. Remove the cinnamon, break the chocolate in and stir off the heat until melted. Stir in half the caster sugar, the flour and egg yolks. Whisk the egg whites with the remaining sugar and fold through.

Heat the oven to 175C/gas mark 3.5. Roll two thirds of the pastry and line a 25cm tart shell with it. Fill to the top with the grain and chocolate. Roll the rest of the pastry, cut into strips and crisscross over the top. Brush the pastry with milk and sprinkle over a pinch of sea salt. Feel free to skip this bit and use leftover pastry for jam tarts if you like. Bake for 35 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving.

Rhubarb and almond pudding

This is a brilliantly quick dessert, but it doesn’t keep. Prepare while cooking everything else, remove from the oven just before sitting down and it will be perfect in time for pudding. Use a large pan to keep the batter shallow.

Serves 2
pistachios 20g
almonds 20g, with skins
rhubarb 200g, thin, cut into 3cm pieces
butter 30g, unsalted
egg 1
light soft brown sugar 50g, plus extra for the rhubarb
salt
orange ½, zested
almond milk 75ml, or whole milk
almonds 50g, finely ground
cinnamon stick a few flakes

Heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Butter a 25cm cake tin. If the pistachios have skins on, pour boiling water over them and stand for 10 minutes, then peel. Roughly chop with the whole almonds. Dust the rhubarb with sugar and scatter in the tin. Melt the butter. Whisk the egg with the sugar and salt, and then the zest, milk, ground almonds and butter. Pour over the fruit and top with the other nuts and small flakes of cinnamon. Bake for 25-30 minutes. It should stay slightly wobbly.

Joe Trivelli is joint head chef at the River Café

Correction: the Traditional Easter roast with potatoes contains a temperature error in the method. The oven should be heated to 120C/gas mark 6 before being increased to 230C/gas mark 8

Why let children have all the fun at Easter? Use ready-made chocolate liqueur or make your own (see below). Serves one.

For white chocolate liqueur (makes about 500ml)
350g white chocolate
125ml milk
75gr caster sugar
350ml vodka
35ml gin
35ml white chocolate liqueur
2 tsp sugar syrup (1:1 sugar:water)
3 dashes lemon bitters
25ml lemonade
1 lemon leaf, to garnish (optional)

If you’re using shop-bought white chocolate liqueur, just skip this paragraph. Put a bowl over a large pan of simmering water (do not let the base of the bowl come into contact with the water), add the white chocolate and stir until melted. Add the milk and sugar, and stir to dissolve. Take off the heat, stir in the vodka and leave to cool. Transfer to a suitable container and freeze for a few hours, then pass through a fine sieve, to remove any solids. Decant into a sterilised jar or bottle, and seal.

Put the gin, liqueur, syrup and bitters in a shaker, fill with ice and shake. Double strain into a highball glass over fresh ice, top with lemonade and garnish.

• Rich Woods, head of spirit and cocktail development, Duck & Waffle, London EC2.

The arrival of the first asparagus each year means spring is in full swing, which is a boon for the smart cook. The markets will fill with wave upon wave of summer garlic, peas, courgettes, beans, berries, aubergine, tomatoes and so on, an ever-changing carnival of produce that goes on until the end of the year. The variety is brilliant. It’s worth going to a market even it’s only once a month, just for the sheer pleasure of seeing all this laid out in front of you. And if you’re clever about what you buy, and when, markets can be cheaper than supermarkets, too. Here, I am making the most of asparagus with a delicate chilled soup scented with dill and mint, and as the star of the show in a rich, sumptuous risotto.

Spring asparagus and yoghurt soup

I like to serve this light soup very cold, but if there is still a nip in the air, there’s nothing to stop you from warming it through. Serves four.

700g asparagus
30g butter
1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
5 spring onions, trimmed and chopped
2 leeks, washed, trimmed and chopped
Flaky sea salt and freshly ground white or black pepper
1 litre chicken (or vegetable) stock, or water
1 small handful fresh dill leaves, chopped, plus extra for serving
1 small handful picked mint leaves, washed and roughly chopped
125g natural yoghurt, plus extra to serve

Snap off the woody ends of the asparagus stalks – they should snap easily at the right point, about an inch from the end of the stalk – then cut the spears in half or into thirds.

Heat the butter and oil in a large pot over a medium flame. Add the spring onions, leeks and half a teaspoon of flaky sea salt (or less of fine sea salt), and cook for about five minutes, until the vegetables start to soften. Add the asparagus and cook for a further five minutes, then pour in the stock or water. Season with freshly ground pepper (I like white in this soup, but that’s just a personal preference), bring to a gentle simmer, and leave to bubble for 10-15 minutes, until all the vegetables are tender.

Transfer the soup to a blender or food processor, add the fresh herbs and whizz completely smooth: you’ll probably have to do this in two or three batches, so start with as many of the solids as possible, to ensure a smoother soup. Add the yoghurt to the last batch of soup and whizz smooth. Combine all the batches of processed soup, and season to taste: remember that the seasoning will taste more muted once the soup is cold. Transfer to the fridge and leave to chill thoroughly.

Serve in bowls, chilled ideally, with a teaspoonful of Greek yoghurt, a sprinkling of finely chopped dill and, if you like, a cube of ice. Alternatively, reheat the soup gently, taking care it doesn’t come to a boil, otherwise the yoghurt will curdle, and serve in bowls topped as for chilled, or with a slick of olive oil and the finely chopped dill.

Asparagus and brown butter risotto with mace and brown shrimp

The addition of the shrimp turns this nutty, silky risotto into something altogether more luxurious. Serves six.

2 bunches asparagus
1.3 litres chicken stock
60g butter
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
¼ nutmeg
500g risotto rice
200ml dry vermouth (or white wine)
50g parmesan, plus extra to serve
200g brown shrimp
1 pinch Turkish chilli flakes or cayenne pepper (optional)
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Snap the woody stems from the base of the asparagus spears as in the soup recipe, then cut them at an angle into 2- to 3cm-long pieces. Put the stalks and tips in separate bowls and steam both for about three minutes, until al dente.

Heat the stock in a small pan and keep warm. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large casserole, season generously, and cook until the solids are a deep, dark brown and smelling nutty. Pour all but a tablespoon of the melted butter into a cup; you’ll be using this later. Add the oil to the casserole, then stir in the onion and season with a pinch of salt and pepper and all the grated nutmeg. Fry the onion until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.

Add the rice to the pot and stir for about four minutes, until all the grains are coated in the fat and turn translucent. Turn up the heat and add the vermouth, stirring until all the liquid has been absorbed, then pour in a ladleful of hot stock and stir. Once the stock has been absorbed, add another ladle, and repeat, stirring, until all the stock is used up; this should take 20-25 minutes in total. Add the steamed asparagus stalks to the risotto with the final ladleful of stock.

Heat a small frying pan, add a tablespoon of the reserved nutty butter and fry the asparagus tips until coloured all over.

When the rice is tender, take it off the heat and stir in the parmesan and shrimps, adding a little more of the butter. Season generously, cover with a lid or foil, and leave to rest for five minutes. Spoon into shallow bowls and top with the remaining butter, the fried asparagus tips, some extra parmesan, a few pinches of chilli or a good grind of pepper, and serve with a lemon wedge.

And for the rest of the week…

You’ll probably have leftover mint and dill after making the soup: chop them finely and store in white-wine or raspberry vinegar sweetened with brown sugar and salt, to make a delicious dressing for grilled lamb chops or roast leg of lamb. And if you’ve got excess risotto, make arancini. Mould the risotto into small balls, stuffing each with a little goat’s cheese or mascarpone, then breadcrumb and fry in butter until crisp. With a crisp, green salad, that’s a gorgeous light lunch or supper.