Newsletter: Easter feasting + special offer on tickets for The British Library food season

Help with planning your Easter cooking

Easter marks the point in the Christian calendar when the penitential forty-day period of Lent is over. Named after the Norse goddess of spring and rebirth Eostre, it is a time to celebrate after the winter fast, to share sweetness and abundance. There is regional variation in Easter foods, but what they have in common is that all-important rich sweetness and reference to the new season of warmth and harvest ahead.

We’ve got all the recipes you need to grace your Easter table. Start the day with Hot Cross Buns – fuel for the lunch preparations. Lamb is traditional for the main event, roast it makes a great centerpiece, such as Lamb Leg Roast with Nutty Mash and there are many different ways to approach it.

Try Iranian Lamb with Rice, Potato, Onion +Turmeric or any of the recipes in our Take a Leg of Lamb collection.

Sweet things are one of the joys of Easter indulgence. There is chocolate, of course, fashioned into the eggs and bunny rabbits that symbolise new birth.

Many of the recipes for Easter Baking Around the World involve an enriched yeast risen dough, and all are delicious. Each region has its own special bakes, from the Greek Easter bread Tsoureki, to Ukrainian Paska Bread.

For even more ideas take a look at this collection of Easter Celebration Food from Around the Globe.

Pictured above: Hot Cross Buns from Oats in the North, Wheat from the South by Regula Ysewijn

Consuming Passions: Chocolate

Chocolatiers and chocolate makers are always especially busy in the run up to Easter, incorporating new spring flavours into their bonbons, and moulding chocolate into seasonal shapes. In our new feature Consuming Passions: Chocolate food writer and Registered Nutritionist Joy Skipper shares her love for the dark stuff.

Having trained at The International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting and travelled to cacao plantations in India, she has upgraded her childhood excitement for confectionery into an understanding of what it takes to make fine chocolate, and its true potential. Chocolate is, of course, also wonderful to cook with. She suggests Little Hot Chocolate Mousses, or try a Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Tart.

View our top chocolate recipes

Dishes to mark Passover

Passover (Pesach), the eight-day festival of freedom celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, starts this year on Wednesday April 5 and runs until the evening of April 13.

The holiday is centered firmly on the family dining table, and traditionally begins with the Seder plate, laid with symbolic foods. Flour and yeasted and fermented foods are off the menu, but there are many wonderful dishes that can be part of the celebration.

Try Perfect Roast Chicken Stuffed with Spicy Matzoh Brei, followed by Lemon Poppy Seed Passover Sponge Cake.

For other dishes that can be part of the celebration choose from some of the recipes in our Passover Menu collection.

Half Price and Free online tickets for the Joyce Molyneaux event at the British Library Food Season

The British Library is delighted to offer all ckbk members half price tickets for one of the star events in this year’s Food Season. The session, Cooking for Joy, is a celebration of the life of the pioneering chef and restaurateur Joyce Molyneux, one of the first women to gain a Michelin star, who died last year at the age of 91. Her acclaimed Carved Angel Cookbook is much loved by chefs and food writers alike and is available in full on ckbk.

The event at the British Library takes place on Sunday 28 May 12.45 – 14.00, and features a wonderful line up of speakers: Angela Hartnett, Sally Clarke, Ravinder Bhogal and Polly Russell.

To book your in person £6 tickets (a 50% discount on full price) please enter the code JOY6 when checking out on the British Library box office. The offer is limited to 2 tickets per booking.

Alternatively, you may also watch the session online completely free (usual price £6.50) in a second offer for ckbk members. Simply book an online pass for the Food Season Super Sunday, which includes ‘Cooking for Joy’ as well as two other events. Please enter the code FSSS when checking out on the British Library box office. The free online offer is limited to 2 tickets per booking. You can either watch live, up to 48 hours after the event, on catch up.

A spotlight on plant-based guru Ashley Madden

When pharmacist Ashley Madden was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in her early twenties it prompted a career and life rethink. She is now a champion of plant-based cooking – her book The Plant-Based Cookbook is available in full on ckbk now!

In our interview Healthy Social she talks with passion about positively influencing the health of others as well as her own health and that of her family, Madden wants to rewrite ideas on what healthy food is like. Gone is a sense of deprivation, replaced by delicious, nutritious food that will be enjoyed by all.

She advocates learning about healthy plant-based cooking and ingredients one recipe at the time. With her recipes that won’t be a hardship!

Try Madden’s favorite Butterm*lk Buckwheat Pancakes with Almond Butter Caramel, or this Pink Quinoa & Cheezy Kale Bowl.

What to eat now: rosemary

A much-prized culinary herb, rosemary was initially valued for its supposed medicinal quality. It is particularly present in the food of Italy and Provence, where meat is often dressed with the herb, and breads are strewn with it.

Try a gentle infusion in this Rosemary Gin Fizz, and how about some Dry-Cured Olives with Rosemary & Orange to nibble while you sip. Its earthy aromatic quality is a gift for bakers, as in Graham Garrett’s Rosemary-Foccacia Chelsea-Buns.

For these recipes and more take a look at our 12 Ways with Rosemary collection.