Spring food for Pesah

 

All the festivals happen this weekend. Passover, Vaisakhi, Easter, and we are in the middle of Ramadan too. My most precious Easter memories are from childhood, when we would frequently go to stay with Italian friends in their small Tuscan village. On Easter day, we would go to church and then wait outside in the tiny piazza as the priest put a taper to the backside of a papier-mache dove which then shot along a wire rigged between the church and a house on the other side of the square  and back again. Firework-powered, this spectacle was some rising of the Holy Spirit indeed.

Afterwards we would go back to the house and feast on spring lamb cooked with potatoes and artichokes and mint. Utterly delicious.

This year I thought we'd look into a Passover feast for tonight, the second evening of Pesah. Consulting Claudia Roden of course, we cooked up Sephardi Jewish dishes that somewhat echo - or testify to the dialogue with - the Christian Mediterranean foods of this time of year. As I was cooking not in my own home, but with and for family on the other side of the country, I chose easy-seeming recipes with classic combinations. Parsley-flecked meatballs simmered in a garlicky sauce with lemon and fresh mint, tweaked with the use of bundles of wild garlic; rice with broad beans and dill, and the all-important tahdig, the crusty bottom; a Turkish flourless cake with almonds, walnuts and orange; and little flourless nut biscuits, also made with nubbly almonds and walnuts, very like the 'brutti ma buoni' of north Italy. Visiting the local market to shop this morning, the vegetable stall had a pile of violet globe artichokes so I couldn't resist and bought a few to nibble on before the meal; and for the vegetarian, I fried up artichoke slices in a light batter and drizzled with honey.

A springtime meal full of flavour, which was indeed as simple and reliable to make as hoped...well, except for the cake which suffered an Aga over-cooking moment and had to be somewhat brutally rescued with the excision of burnt bits, a generous drizzle of orange syrup and icing sugar to conceal! But it was a happy peaceful meal and much enjoyed by all.

Happy Pesah!