Easter cooking traditions

Even though we cannot celebrate Easter this year with our family we decided to follow our family traditions anyway. Food is very important part of our Easter celebrations, and therefore I've spent most of this week in the kitchen.

On Thursday we eat something green, on Friday we fast, on Saturday we eat light and on Sunday we eat too much! Easter Monday is more less the same as Sunday.

Normally, we would fill our basket with food on Saturday night and leave it on the balcony until the next morning as the fridge is usually full and you wouldn't fit a needle in there even if you tried hard.

But why do we do it? On Sunday morning we would wake up at 5 AM to be in front of the church at 6 AM for the blessing of our Sunday food. We would wait in the queue for the priest to come to us and proceed with the blessing.

I remember standing there for an hour in cold when I was younger. The weather this year is great, so it wouldn't be that bad but there were years when we were waiting outside in our winter clothes shivering from the cold. After the ceremony we would return home and enjoy our blessed produce. Well, first we would go to bed for a couple of hours to warm up and then we would enjoy the food.

As we couldn't do it this year because we were not able to travel, we decided to do as much as we can. Of course, I wouldn't wake up at 5 AM but I prepared almost all food myself. After I woke up in the morning, I put the food on a tray as I don't have any basket at home and set our table on the balcony. It's been a nice warm morning and I thought that it would be great to eat outside.

At the beginning of the week I started to plant barley grass, garden cress and arugula sprouts to decorate my table with young fresh green which symbolizes spring.

Yesterday was a crazy day in the kitchen. I woke up late and enjoyed a long breakfast on the balcony. I totally forgot about my cooking plan! Just before lunchtime I realized that I had too many things to do and started cooking immediately.

I started with tahini as I needed it for some of my recipe and I didn't have any of it in my pantry. It's such an easy and cheap thing to do! I've been making mine at home for over 2 years and I don't think that I will buy a jar from the store anymore. You only need lightly toasted sesame seeds and high-speed food processor. Yes, that's it!

You process the sesame seeds for about 10 minutes and get your tahini paste. You have to stop from time to time and scrap the seeds from the side of the bowl and you might also need to get your food processor little time to rest in between if it would become too hot. Be patient, it takes some time but it is worth it!

Then I finished my fermented macadamia cheese that I started on Friday. You need to soak 150 g of macadamia nuts for 10 hours, rinse them and place them in the food processor. You blend until the mixture is smooth and light (about 20 seconds) and then you stir 1 tsp of yogurt ferment in the mixture. Pour it in the clean kitchen towel which you placed in a bowl, seal it and place something heavy on top of it. Let it rest for 18 hours.

The next steps are very easy as you only need to flavor your cheese. I use 3/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 2 tbsp nutritional yeast, 5 tsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp chopped parsley, 1 tbsp chopped mint, 1 tbsp chopped dill and you can also add garlic. Feel free to use any herbs you like. It's the most delicious plantbased cheese ever!

Next, I made these scallions knots. Normally, I would add garlic but this time I opted for scallions and they were delicious! There are plenty of recipes all over the internet, so everyone can find one that they really like.

Potato salad must be on the Easter menu too! I used baby potatoes that I boiled for about 15 minutes. Then I put them aside to cool.

Next, I prepared my dressing by mixing 1 tbsp mild mustard with 2 tbsp lemon juice and 4 tbsp olive oil. You might want to adjust the measurements depending on how many potatoes you have. I added 2 shallots marinated in a little bit of vinegar, 4 homemade pickles, and lots of parsley, dill and chervil. I would add some mint too, but I had none left. Once the potatoes cooled down completely, I added the dressing with the rest of the ingredients, stirred it thoroughly and put it in the fridge to rest. It's better to let it sit in the fridge overnight, so that all the flavors will combine. Yum!

And finally, I prepared my escalopes. This is a recipe that I developed over the years and will include it in my upcoming cookbook, so it's a secret for now. I can only tell you that they are scrumptious! Even my omnivore friends love them!

And here is our lunch from today. I pan fried the escalopes and served them with my potato salad. I also served it with some lettuce and veggies but I was so hungry that I forgot to take more pictures.

You might be asking what we had for dessert...

We had some chocolate eggs! I didn't make any cake as we are only the two of us and would have to eat it for at least a week.

I hope that you have enjoyed learning about our Easter food tradition.

Thank you for visiting!

Cheers!