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April 3, 2007

Easter recipes for new cooks, new recipes for old ones

Projo.com's food section -- as well as every other news org's -- tosses up new recipes every Easter. For old time's sake, here are a few others from 2001: Easter feasts Italian style and Easter eggs, ham, and spuds -- made easy -- a primer for first-time holiday cooks.

Easter at Epicurious makes me hungry: Leg Of Lamb Stuffed With Greens And Feta involves white wine, scallions, fennel, oregano and assorted greens such as spinach and beet, whatever you have or like best.

Roasted Potatoes With Garlic, Lemon, And Oregano accompany it.

A Southern menu serves up an easy Glazed Ham With Pineapple Mustard Sauce

Martha Stewart does Easter, bigtime. Easy: Bourbon-Glazed Ham; Herb Crusted Leg of Lamb, with garlic, oregano, lemon and brandy. Ham 101 has tips you might be glad you read, if you're cooking one.

My favorite lamb recipe is "butterflied" -- peeled back flat from the bone and trimmed of fat. My husband gets into it, but you can ask the supermarket butcher to do it when you buy your leg. It's flavorful and not a bit greasy, and doesn't at all resemble the gray, stringy mystery meat of my childhood.

White Chocolate Fudge Easter Egg Truffles from Pillsbury are melted vanilla chips and vanilla frosting, pure sugar rush. But seasonally pretty.

Simple recipes to make with kids come from Twin Groves Middle School, Buffalo Grove, Ill. Here you'll find ham, bunny cookies, things to do with real eggs and the World's Best Chocolate Easter Eggs, which actually look easy enough to make on a busy day.

Should you need a printable lamb stencil, here you go.

Italian Easter Meat & Cheese Pie is part of a clever recipe presentation on Flickr: You'll see a grid of photos, with text links below. Each thumbnail is an ingredient or a step in making the cheese pie recipe below them on the page.

Tips: How to Boil Eggs for Eating or Decorating.

The day after: Deviled eggs.

Asparagus And Pesto Filled Egg Halves are at the other end of the spectrum from the sugar eggs. These eggs would be a big surprise in anybody's basket. It's from Lucullian Delights, a food blog in Tuscany, Italy.

Several blogs, including Lucullian, are participating in a food-blogging event that aims to bring separate bloggers together for a joint post focused on a single theme: Waiter, there's something in my ... Easter basket!

The results, with a couple of dozen food blogs from around the world contributing, are spectacular. Often, the recipes offered are treats from the bloggers' childhoods.

Just a few:

Beautiful Chinese Tea Leaf Eggs, made by boiling eggs in soy sauce, tea leaves and star anise, comes from Amy Chen of Nook & Pantry in Seattle.

Fake eggs of coconut panna cotta and banana chip puree from Evelin of Bounteous Bites in Tallinn, Estonia.

Dowd Family Coconut Cream Eggs. Deborah Dowd of Newport News, Va. writes that it's her mother-in-law's recipe and, "I know a lot of people buy their eggs from church groups, but at least once you should try making them yourself.... they put the commercial ones to shame."

Pansyshell Cookies from South Africa.

The Plum Tart comes from Allen of Eating Out Loud, who grew up on a farm in Michigan.

Εξοχικο Τσουρεκι με Κουμ Κουατ - Country Sweet Loaf with Kumquats: Be warned that you'll open a page in Greek but, just like the headline, English follows. From Ala Grecque, of course. Among the ingredients:

1 tbs grand marnier or cointreau liquor
50 gr. dark chocolate diced
1/2 tsp mahleb crushed

Mahleb = sour cherry pits. There's a good gram calculator at GourmetSleuth, to help with the other conversions.

Here's a simple, traditional recipe for this tsoureki -- Greek Easter bread. There's another at Martha Stewart: Diane's Greek Braided Easter Bread and a Ukrainian Easter Bread recipe there, too.

Alt-Easter: So you don't like ham. Or lamb. You want all-natural. And you frown on sugar. Or you don't eat meat.

Veganizing Easter and Passover Celebrations, with recipes. Easter Recipes from the Vegetarian Society.

Make Chateaubriand (Beef tenderloin), or Herbed Roast Beef Tenderloin.

Redo Thanksgiving: Here's my turkey recipe blogavaganza.

The Busy Cooks page at About.com offers dozens of Alternative Easter Menus.

Easter Candy Alternatives: It's Not All About the Sweets

Coloring Easter Eggs: Natural Alternatives

Check out the Passover recipes I blogged this morning. Crossover is indeed possible.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:57 PM | Permalink