Easter arrives tomorrow, and if this week's food coverage proved anything, it's that the old rules – lamb, a polite pudding, maybe a glass of something decent – have loosened considerably.
Let's start with the lamb, because that part, at least, still holds. But even here, things have shifted. The traditional roast hasn't disappeared so much as it's been… nudged. A leg with rosemary and garlic is still perfectly welcome, but it now sits alongside harissa-rubbed shoulders, Kashmiri rogan josh, garlicky Lebanese toum and sticky, spice-led numbers that would have looked wildly out of place on an Easter table even a decade ago.
It makes sense. Lamb, with all its richness, is far too accommodating to be left alone with mint sauce forever. It wants chilli, yoghurt, smoke, citrus, herbs – things that cut through, lift it, make it feel like something new. The result is an Easter lunch that doesn't ask you to choose between tradition and excitement. You can have both on the same plate, and probably should.
If that's the main event, then the baking is where any lingering restraint goes to die. Because while a Simnel cake still earns its place – all fruit, marzipan and quiet ceremony – it's now competing with Mini Egg cookies, Creme Egg brownies, Biscoff and Nutella blondies and a chocolate cookie pie that feels less like a dessert and more like a dare.
There's also a hot cross bun ice cream sandwich, which takes something faintly pious and turns it into a full-blown sugar rush. This is where Easter has landed, really: not so much a celebration of moderation as a licence to go slightly overboard. If you can't melt, smash and repurpose your way through a pile of chocolate this weekend, when exactly are you meant to?
Not everything this week was quite so maximalist. We also pulled together a set of spring recipes for the in-between days – the ones where it's lighter outside but you're not entirely ready to give up comfort. Think herby prawn orecchiette, wild garlic pesto folded through pasta, asparagus turned into something worth building a meal around, and carrot-spiked hot cross buns that feel like a seasonal bridge between winter and spring. The sort of cooking that doesn't try too hard, but still feels like a shift.
To drink, Rosamund Hall made a compelling case for treating Easter less like a single day and more like the start of something. Her picks lean into that mood: bright, blossom-scented fizz, rosés that actually taste of something, and lighter reds that won't overwhelm whatever ends up on the table. Sensible, but not boring – which feels about right for this time of year.
And then, cutting through all of it, came a reminder from Jad Youssef that not everything needs reinventing. His take on Lebanese cooking – and the creeping influence of "creative" twists like chocolate hummus or beetroot falafel – was refreshingly blunt. Some dishes, he argued, are already exactly what they need to be. Not everything benefits from a rebrand.
Which leaves us here: a weekend that will, in all likelihood, involve too much food, too much chocolate and at least one slightly overambitious plan to cook everything at once. But if Easter is about anything now, it's that balance – between the familiar and the new, the proper and the playful, the roast and whatever you decide to do with it.
Frankly, there are worse ways to spend a Sunday.
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From chocolate ravioli to cavapoo eggs, when did Easter food become so unhinged? |
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Doritos hot cross buns, chocolate fried chicken and boozy Mini Egg liqueur – Easter has become a playground for increasingly bizarre food trends. Hannah Twiggs on how the supermarket aisle lost the plot |
Inside M&S, the lights are up, but the shelves are only half-stocked, a small cluster of people hovering in the bakery section with the quiet intensity of commuters waiting for a delayed train. They're not here for bread. They're here for the Speckled Egg Cookies – the ones that are all over TikTok, the ones that sold out yesterday, the ones someone online swore were "by the pastries, second shelf down".
But even though the store has only just opened, there are none to be had.
Someone nearby asks the staff when they're coming back. Another is already refreshing their phone. Across the country, the same thing is playing out with customers trying multiple stores in one day, asking about restocks, posting sightings like they're tracking a rare bird.
It is, in every sense, a hunt. Which is about the only Easter-y thing about it.
What's so special about them? Not much. They're thick cookies with white and milk chocolate buttons and a scattering of speckled eggs. Fine. Nice. Entirely replicable at home with a bag of chocolate eggs and a free afternoon...
Read the full article here
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| More tasty recipes inside |
Enjoy endless inspiration with recipes, interviews and more in your latest Indy/Eats food and drink magazine, one of your Independent Premium subscription benefits |
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| Part cookbook, part memoir, Lebnani traces Jad Youssef's journey from Beirut to Britain through the food that shaped him. Expect soulful, unfussy Lebanese cooking – hummus, slow stews, grills – alongside stories of family, resilience and home. It's less about reinvention, more about getting things right, with recipes rooted firmly in tradition.
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