Give a girl a Sunday off...

Easter weekend cooking

Welcome to Home Cooking Diary, a monthly-ish newsletter on the journey of a home cook—the successes and failures alike. Cooking log, photo diary, and recipe recommender. Today we’re getting into what I cooked on Easter Sunday. Forgive the belated timing of posting this on May 2. I’m doing my best!!

This year was the first year I celebrated Easter since childhood. Perhaps it’s this way in a lot of families, but I had to remind myself how fun Easter is for kids. There was a time in childhood it was my favorite holiday. There’s something so exciting about the ritual of searching for the basket and eggs the Easter Bunny had hidden for you. So with family coming to town, and my mother-in-law Kim spearheading egg decorating, I decided to close the bookstore for the day—no small thing considering how bad the month of April has been for revenue, and gearing up to move my store—a super costly thing to do. What did I do with my time off? You guessed it…

For brunch on Sunday I made Baked Eggs with Asparagus & Ricotta inspired by Justine Doiron’s recent newsletter post. First I snapped the ends of the asparagus spears and tossed them in a large bowl with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. After adding those to a skillet (my cast iron wasn’t big enough, but the Great Jones one I have worked fine), I cracked in 6 eggs, then dotted the whole pan with spoonfuls of ricotta, and drizzled a little cream over the whole thing.

This was very yummy, but not quite substantial enough for me. I think some sliced yukon gold potatoes, or sausages on the bias, would make it feel like more of a meal that stands alone. Also I find it near impossible to cook baked eggs evenly. Some were a lil overcooked and some slightly undercooked around the egg white (a pet peeeve of mine)…maybe cast iron would have helped with that.

For dinner that night, I tried finding lamb last minute for Colu Henry’s ragu—which I have fond memories of making one year on Easter—but having not found any, bought Italian sausage for Julius Roberts’s Sausage Pasta Stew. INCREDIBLE. I continue to be so in love with his recipes and style of cooking. It feels like home cooking, influenced mostly by British and Italian tradition, but with the expertise of a trained chef. This one I made from a recipe in his newsletter, but I often just cook from his videos, and somehow everything always comes out stellar.

You begin with a very traditional Italian sofrito—butter, oil, finely chopped carrot, celery, and onion—and that’s cooked over low heat for quite awhile until it becomes very soft, and a soup is built on to that. once you’ve browned the sausage, added white wine, broth, beans, pasta and pasta water, it’s become something between a stew and a slightly well-done pasta. The perfect texture. And finally, it’s tossed with torn basil and topped with Parmesan and a squeeze of lemon at the last minute. It’s a wonderful one-pot meal fit for a crowd.

Keeping this one short, but next time I’ll be offering up a recipe for Sausage soup with spinach and orzo that I’ve made a few different versions of. I’m ready to share now I’ve zeroed in on a favorite. See you then!