A fresh take on seasonal favourites adds Middle Eastern spice and cleverly accommodates leftover hot cross buns for afters

The daffodils are out, parading their annual magnificence, and I can’t help but be enchanted by the beauty of spring. While I’m not religious, I also can’t help but revel in the festivities of Easter. Eggs, lamb and hot cross buns are all traditional, but these fuss-free recipes give them a new lease of life. Buy in some flatbreads and pickles to serve alongside the meat, so you aren’t stuck in the kitchen for the whole day. After all, there are more important things to do – such as hunting for chocolate eggs!

Continue reading...

An Easter brunch of eggs in creamed spinach with spiced butter seeds, and a Korean-inspired take on spicy fried eggs

Eggs are for life, not just for Easter. Of course I think that, as someone who has just written a book focused on eggs. But this long weekend provides a particularly ovoid prompt. The baked-egg dish does what it says on the tin: lightly spiced seeds add bite and verve to a luscious, creamed spinach base. And the piquant, Korean-inspired skillet eggs are a winning brunch or lunch for one, and equally easy to scale up to feed a group.

These recipes are edited extracts from Good Eggs: Over 100 Cracking Ways to Cook and Elevate Eggs, by Ed Smith, published by Quadrille at £22. To order a copy for £19.36, go to guardianbookshop.com

Continue reading...

Catherine Hunt says making her own is a habit and a way of life, while John Boaler is a fan of electric breadmakers. Plus letters from Helen Clutton and Lesley Noblett

Re your article on breadmaking ( Britain’s bitter bread battle: what a £5 sourdough loaf tells us about health, wealth and class, 20 March ), I am a very ordinary person living a very ordinary life in a semi-detached house, caring for my grandchildren while their parents work. I make a loaf of organic sourdough bread every day for less than £1. The flour comes from Shipton Mill and is delivered to my door for free.

Sourdough is the most well‑behaved bread. It is not demanding and does not need exact timings. The slowness of the rise means you can forget it and it does not sink: a grace-filled bread.

Continue reading...

Craft yourself some Glamorgan sausages out of stale bread, dark green leek tops and bean water

Last year, I helped the Welsh government set up a food sustainability toolkit for home cooks and food industry professionals alike. You can access it for free , and it’s full of tips to help reduce food waste, packaging and energy use in the kitchen. The website is also a great resource for sustainable Welsh-inspired recipes, including fish-scrap croquettes and today’s Glamorgan sausages, which are a great way to use up stale bread. However, I’ve adapted the traditional recipe to use up not only stale bread but also dark-green leek tops and aquafaba, which acts as a binding agent instead of the usual eggs and milk, so cutting costs and saving waste. Glamorgan sausages are very simple to make and are a great vegetarian option for breakfast or supper; I tend always to make a few extra for the next day.

Continue reading...

Some complain that pricey sourdough is elitist and pretentious. Others lambast cheap sliced white as unhealthy and unsustainable. How did our most basic foodstuff become a source of conflict and division?

The cheapest loaf in my nearest supermarket costs 45p. The cheapest loaf in my local artisanal bakery costs £5. Which of these facts winds you up?

For Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge, it is the £5 sourdough. Writing in the Guardian this month, he railed against “bougie” bakeries charging more for “fancy” bread. For Chris Young, the coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign , it is the 45p white sliced. In response to Yeo’s article, he pointed out that ultra-processing enables supermarkets to sell bread so cheaply.

Continue reading...

The classic spicy Levantine sandwich is made meat-free with hearty baked mushrooms

Reviews and ratings are very much a part of our daily lives. Most of them I disregard, but occasionally something cuts through and it feels as if people have truly voted with their hearts. That was the case when I stumbled across Sam Sifton’s New York Times recipe for chicken shawarma with 19,624 five-star ratings. I had to try it, but there were two problems: I didn’t want chicken (I wanted mushrooms) and, being a serial tinkerer in the kitchen, I tinkered with it. With thanks and apologies to Sam, I’m happy to report that I’d give this five stars, too.

Continue reading...

The malty, treacly and slightly sweet traditional Irish bread: our resident perfectionist weighs up the options and comes up with her own perfect version

Beer and bread have a long and mutually beneficial relationship – before the advent of commercial yeasts, barm, or the froth from the top of the fermenting brew, was commonly used to leaven bread – but beer-flavoured breads are a more recent phenomenon. Though loaves claiming to contain lighter ales can feel like a game of hunt the hop, the rich, assertive flavour of stout makes it hard to miss, and its malty sweetness is a particularly good pairing with moist, brown Irish soda bread.

As Cherie Denham , author of The Irish Bakery , points out: “The Irish like nothing more than a freshly baked loaf and a pint of well-poured Guinness – so this is the perfect combination of our two favourite things.” A further selling point, should one be needed, is that this loaf takes just over an hour from start to finish, and barely five minutes of your time, which is more than it takes to pour a perfect pint, but not that much more. After that, you just need patience, and to remember that the best things come to those who wait.

Continue reading...

A hearty winter soup with an ancient punchy pesto called cuminatum – can you guess its magic ingredient?

Frustrated by our inability to do not just urgent things in our small flat, but anything, I recently forced the issue and pulled everything out of an extremely large wardrobe. Weeks later, the empty wardrobe is still waiting to be removed, while the rest of the flat is inside out, there’s no hook without nine things hanging on it and no surface clear. Except one. One of three shelves in the cupboard above the washing machine – the one I look at most, with the tea, custard and jars filled with things that are not only tidy, but clean, so I can see what is cocoa and what is cumin.

In De re coquinaria , or Apicius , an extensive source of ancient Roman recipes, cumin is medicinal and a pantry staple. Its warm, volatile nature adds spice and stimulates all sorts of appetites. The dried seed of the herb Cuminum cyminum – part of the Umbelliferae family along with parsley and celery – cumin is ancient and has its origins in Iran. It is also precious and useful, which is why it travelled so widely. Three types are described in Apicius: Ethiopian, Syrian and Libyan cumin, all of which are used in various recipes, and also made into a cumin-based sauce called cuminatum .

Continue reading...

US enthusiasts who follow the tradition of sharing dough are now receiving about 1,000 requests a week, up from 30 to 60

“There’s an old pioneer tradition” dating from the earliest days of the colonisation of the US west, says Mary Buckingham, “that you shared your bread starter with anyone who asked.”

Which was all very well until TikTok came along.

Continue reading...