Easter Basket Eats
Poireaux Vinaigrette, Crossing Delancey and Candy Bowls
The Easter Post. Easter may have been a month ago, but it’s SPRING - a time of renewal and revitalization. As someone who still has Easter candy in their house, and a discounted Easter ham in their freezer, let me renew this topic.
The Croatian Easter basket contains four key components: pogača (Easter bread that I made last year with my Nonna and wrote about), hard boiled eggs, green onions and salt. Eating a breakfast of raw green onions dipped in salt was a tradition that my great-grandfather, Nick, carried from the “old country,” as my Nonna would say, to his children’s and grand-children’s Easter table.
Eggs and alliums, and specifically leeks, are a winning combination - one I have seen all over restaurant menus lately. Additionally, leeks vinaigrette, or “poireaux vinaigrette,” the classic French dish, is popping up like springtime crocus heads on menus all over. My birthday dinner at Dreyfus in Toronto featured “poireaux vinaigrette” and ricotta on the menu. When visiting Halifax in mid March, a Narrows Public House staple was pickled devilled eggs topped with frizzled leeks. At Bar Kismet, leeks vinaigrette alongside hard boiled eggs and white anchovies was one of my highlight dishes.
Croatian Easter baskets certainly have something right: eggs and alliums are besties.
For my Valentine’s menu, I made leeks vinaigrette as an appetizer. A simple dish that highlights the quality of your leeks and the ingredients you serve it with. I bought a piece of comté, baguette from Blackbird, Cerignola olives, cornichons, and, of course, some 8 minute eggs. An eggs and alliums focussed charcuterie board.
Poireaux Vinaigrette
Ingredients:
6-8 small leeks
1/4 cup olive oil
1.5 teaspoons dijon
1.5 teaspoons grainy dijon
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, grated
1/2 shallot, finely minced
1 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt and pepper, to taste
To serve:
capers
cornichons
olives
8 minute boiled eggs
hard or medium-firm cheese
crusty bread
Method:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and season liberally with salt.
Trim the leeks: remove their tough outer layers, cut off the dark green stalks (leave a little green at the top) and the root end. Make a slit down the leeks lengthwise, about 3/4 of the way down, leaving the root intact. Fill a large bowl with water and clean the leeks of any dirt. Ensure there is no grit left between their layers.
Add the leeks to the pot once the water is boiling. Simmer the leeks for about 10 minutes, until very tender. Transfer the leeks to a plate with paper towel. You may now split them completely in half.
Make your vinaigrette: in a small bowl, combine the olive oil, mustards, vinegar, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper and whisk til emulsified.
Blot the leeks with a paper towel and place them into a serving dish. Spoon 3/4 of the vinaigrette over. Cover and chill the leeks in the fridge for at least 3 hours.
When ready to serve, spoon the remaining vinaigrette over the leeks. Eat with capers, cornichons, olives, boiled eggs, cheese and bread.
Popcorn
Wanted to fill the readership in on my current fav to bake from: Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi, a recipe developer and contributor to the New York Times. I took it out from the library, but decided it was too good to keep returning, and pulled the trigger on my own copy from good egg. Arefi recently came out with Snacking Bakes, which I am soooo excited about.
The ethos of Snacking Cakes is this: cake should not just be a special occasion sweet, but rather a treat one can enjoy in the day to day. I couldn’t agree more. Aside from Arefi’s recipes (I love the lime coconut cake, the swirled jam cake, the pumpkin olive oil cake) my favourite snacking cake is my nonna’s banana cake, which I made a video about. Let them eat cake!
In watching news, I recently fell head-over-heels with the movie Crossing Delancey (1988). Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving), a modern Jewish woman working in publishing (who “organize[s] the most prestigious reading series in New York”) is set up with a working class, Delancey street Jewish pickle seller named Sam (Peter Riegert). Skeptical of the life Sam leads, and believing it to be beneath her, Izzy tries to run away from love, tradition, and the smell of pickles. Convention and desire collides! There are many scenes set around Izzy’s Bubbe’s dining table, as well as a striking scene set at Gray’s Papaya (Izzy’s birthday meal is hotdogs “with extra sauerkraut”, of course!). Oh, to buy buy pickles fresh out of the barrel from Sam Posner! Dreamy.
Sexy Little Snack
I bought a candy bowl from Canadian Tire in the fall and it changed me as a woman. Nathan predicted this would happen to our household, even before we moved in together:
Ultimately, I am so deeply Nonna-core.
My Nonna always has cupboards and bowls and car-armrests and counters full of candy, and well…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree folks. My candy bowl changes with the seasons, it’s festive! Purdy’s caramel chocolates for Valentine’s Day (in the Valentine’s wrapper, duh!), Hershey’s Easter mix (Reese’s eggs, cookies ‘n’ creme eggs, milk chocolate eggs) for Easter! Other candy bowl bangers have been Chimes Ginger Chews and Reese’s Pieces Peanuts. Personally, I love black liquorice (I got a gorg mix from the St. Lawrence market). Now I always have a treat to feed my girls, a pick me up throughout the day, a little dessert to have with my evening tea. Nonna-core.
Easter candy is the best candy IMO (Hershey’s cookies ‘n’ creme Easter bunny, Reese’s egg, Reese’s peanut butter enrobed egg which also comes in white chocolate - I’m a fucking Hershey's freak, plus Mini Eggs ofc). Every year, I make Nigella Lawson’s easter cake: a flourless chocolate cake topped with chocolate whipped cream and Mini Eggs! It’s rich and chocolatey, and is also delish with fresh strawberries on top (summer version). But the Mini Eggs are whimsical, and so is Easter, and so am I! Mini Eggs are available all year round, so you can have the Easter bunny spirit in your home always, either on your cakes or in your candy bowl.
TTYL & XOXO! <3