Navigating Easter's abundance
As a kid I loved Easter, my grandparents gave us presents and there was chocolate, what else could one want. I was blissfully unconcerned with its religiosity.
For some unbeknown reason, we would more often than not spend Easter at the Hythe Imperial on the East Kent coast. A hotel in the Grand old style, (but even then one whose grandeur was leaning towards faded,) Easter there was commercial, not a scrap of religious ceremony, instead a mardi gras of celebratory tropes and activity, an unhinged display of cliche and stereotype that was nothing if not soothing to give yourself over too. And my word were they good at it. Yes, there was an egg hunt, yes there was a fancy-schmancy lunch of lamb, mint sauce, blah, blah, blah; but mainly there was fun - table tennis competitions, Scalextrics, indoor bowls, outdoor putting competitions, go-karts, egg painting, swimming races, the works. If you can, for a moment, imagine the sheer joy of a morning that went something like: wake early and watch the African cup of nations on Transworld Sport whilst gorging on an illicit early easter egg; destroy the evidence before being caught by a parent; open a gift, something like a Hyperglow t-shirt or a Man Utd goalkeeping top; Coco Pops and a ham and cheese omelette for breakfast; head down to the leisure centre for table tennis, then Scalextric, then out to the putting green, then up to the ballroom (when last had it been used as such?) for indoor bowls, then outside again for croquet, inside again for swimming races, out in the car for go-karting, then back down to the leisure centre for the finals of the table tennis and the Scalextric, before finally being corralled for a very late lunch of grey lamb and a heady mint sauce that always reminded me of my grandmother's chest of drawers. There was always bingo, a quiz and dancing in the evenings, we always somehow found time for the crossword with my Grandfather, one unseasonably hot year there was an outdoor barbecue replete with lamb burgers and a bucking bronco.
At some juncture in my childhood, this strange English hotel idyll was swapped for a trip abroad at Easter. We were going up in the world, and as such, we kept up with the Joneses. Easter was a different proposition out there amongst the international well-to-do. And I was having much too much of a good time to even really process that Easter, in any sense I used to recognise, was happening at all.
As such, when as an early adult my Easters came crashing back down to earth, I was struck initially by how quaint and claustrophobic it felt as a celebration. It became a festivity I had little truck for.
Once I was gainfully employed in kitchens I was invariably working, and the cloying religious stuff, on the one hand, the stilted and limited traditions of the food on the other, combined to put me right off the Easter period altogether.
And then, out of nowhere, I started dating an extraordinary woman who rather liked Easter. Her family took it seriously, and they elevated it. Yes, Hot Cross Buns were on offer, but so was Stollen, and marzipan fruits; and dishes of lamb and fish weren't limited to the stuffy suburban rigidity that led to a heavy lamb roast with thick gravy and gloopy mint sauce being served up on what was often a beautiful spring weekend, their dishes instead were often drawn from Turkey, Iran, Japan or Vietnam. Suddenly the undercurrent of religious pomp and ceremony became more appealing too. In restaurant kitchens I was now exposed to Easter across the world; Italian colleagues indoctrinated me into Pasqua and its colomba di pasqua and torta pasqualina; one chef’s Danish traditions sounded charming with plenty of painted eggs and a marzipan slice that I still make to this day; the Greek kitchen porters told tales of tsoureki, koulourakia and red eggs; Benôit’s chasse aux oeufs just sounded better than our Easter egg hunt, despite being exactly the same thing. Largely it seemed the Catholics were having more fun at Easter, and I began to link high-church pomp with a prevalence for sanctioned gluttony, and I saw I could access and adopt any of the customs I wanted, without even needing to acknowledge the accompanying religious hang-ups.
Now I was approaching Easter much like Christmas, which meant unbridled greed for a long weekend - which is never a bad thing. And better still, the fridge was now full with leftovers for much of the week afterwards. Any time of year when food is in abundance, especially niche and speciality foods, means opportunity, specifically the opportunity for snacking, and picking, and finding naughty little combinations of things to tempt and intrigue the tastebuds after being beaten with the richness of the formal celebratory meal. So now, having survived the obligatory lamb and accompaniments, and having gorged on chocolate and my roster of international Easter baked goods, I relish the coming days; for in that slump that succeeds a celebration, I now have cheeky little treats to drag the joy with me.
Laughably, given my adoption of Easter treats from outside these shores, most of my naughty little post-Easter treats seem to revolve around what might be seen as the most traditional of British Easter foodstuffs. I guess they are the old teddy bears of my Easter pantry, the things that get overlooked in favour of the shiny new treats.
As such, below are the things I lean on in the week post-Easter. I don’t think any are revelatory or particularly groundbreaking, but they are good, and even if this little list only acts as an incitement for your own bespoke creations, I heartily recommend adopting its spirit and snacking with abandon.
Nine ways with leftover Hot Cross Buns:
My relationship with hot cross buns is complex. I have a lifelong aversion to candied peel that sits at odds with my otherwise liberal relationships with challenging flavours, (which normally suggests that I just haven’t met them at their best yet).
With this in mind, I find there is an inverse relationship between my enjoyment of the hottie in question and the price for which I paid. There is a lower bound to this which can be found in the cheapest offering in Aldi or the budget version on the bakery counter in Sainsbury’s, too often are they dry and too sparse with fruit and spices, but anything else is fair game at the bottom end. At the top end, I find the increase in pleasure versus the increase in cost is a relationship of ever-diminishing returns, meaning premium hotties are often just not worth it once you pass a certain price threshold.
Anyway, long story short, I tend to stock up on bog-standard hotties to see us through the Easter period; and many of these are leftover come the Tuesday after Easter. What follows is a schedule of three or four hotties a day. Below are my thoughts on their best applications:
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