Category: lockdown food

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Easter bread and no eggs

The chocolate eggs I ordered two weeks ago for the family didn’t arrive in time for the Easter weekend. This feels like a bit of a first world problem, to be honest, so we’ve all agreed that we’ll enjoy them if and when they arrive later this week, and in the meantime to mark the day, I made Tsoureki.

Hugh remembers this from his days in Istanbul. I’d never tasted it before, but was up for a voyage of discovery, and bizarrely I had most of the ingredients needed in the cupboard.

This is a special Greek Easter bread sweetened with sugar, enriched with egg yolks and made fragrant with orange zest and mahlep, a curious spice made from cherry kernels. I had a packet of mahlep powder gifted from a visit from relatives a year ago and had never used it, not really understanding what it was or what it added.

The bread was soft and doughy, a cross between cake and bread in texture, and sweetly fragrant. We nibbled some as it came out of the oven yesterday, and will eat the rest with honey for breakfast with our coffee this morning.

Thinking about it, if the chocolate eggs had arrived in time I wouldn’t have searched for a celebratory alternative. A perfect example of creativity blossoming in adversity in our current captivity! And a delicious one that will form a part of our Easter celebrations from now onwards, I think.

New beginnings.

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Using up the fridge first

Suddenly we’re all much more conscious that food is a precious commodity as the London supermarket shelves empty and the online delivery slots shrivel up.

I’ve always hated wasting food, but now more than ever I’m making a concerted attempt to use up what we have and make the most of it.

There was a pack of pastry reaching its use-by date and some rather dried up spring onions lurking at the back of the fridge that probably would have been thrown out. Instead I thought that if I mashed a potato, grated a handful of mature cheddar, added the spring onions and some seasoning and mixed the lot up as a filling, that we had the makings of cheesy potato pasties.

Just what was needed to keep us going for a late lunch after a morning of remote working from home.

Dinner tonight is more leftovers. I’ve chopped the cold roast pork remains from the weekend with a few remaining cold roast potatoes (I know! Who knew it was possible to leave roast potatoes 😊) along with chopped onion, garlic, greens and chillies to make a fried hash which we’ll eat with runny eggs and some crusty bread.

Not at all what I would have served up for supper a few weeks ago, but the best use of food that would otherwise go off or be wasted.

Because who knows when there will be more coming…