Good Friday Eats

Happy Easter everyone!  Hope you're all enjoying the long weekend!  Normally I do a bit of Easter baking around this time of year, (see examples from 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010), but this week has been so hectic that I completely forgot to get anything organised.  And now it's Friday and all the shops are shut.  Whoops!  So for today, a very quick post.  I just wanted to show you the Eastery things I ate today, all based on what I had lying around the house.

Babka hot cross bun, butter, coffee

For breakfast I had a hot cross bun that my dad bought for me from Babka yesterday - thanks Dad! - toasted and with lashings of butter, of course.  (This is only the second hot cross bun I've eaten all year, can you believe it?  At least I've got another three days to eat my fill!)

Lunch was a summery insalata caprese, made with roma tomatoes (also known as "egg" tomatoes, geddit?), buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and lashings of olive oil.  I'm counting this as an Easter recipe due to the egg shape of the mozzarella and tomatoes.  And of course, olive oil always seems vaguely biblical to me.  (Yes, I do realise I'm drawing a long bow here!)

Dense chocolate loaf cake

And because you can't have enough chocolate at Easter, afternoon tea was a gorgeously squidgy slice of Nigella Lawson's dense chocolate loaf cake, which I made earlier in the week.  (This is one of those sensible loaf cakes that improves with time).

And finally, for dinner I returned to the egg-shaped theme, with Szechuan chilli chicken and shiitake bao zi.  I adapted the recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's pork and beansprout bao zi - from her fabulous book Sichuan Cookery - to use up ingredients that I already had.  Basically, I used the same flavourings, but replaced the pork and beansprouts with finely chopped chicken and shiitake mushrooms.

I did half of them in a normal round shape, and steamed them...

...and did the other half in an open-flower shape.  I cooked these open ones "potsticker" style - frying them until crispy on the bottom, pouring boiled water from a kettle around them, clamping a lid on, and letting them steam until the water was absorbed and the dough was cooked through.

These were so good! I especially loved the pan-fried ones with their crispy bottoms.  The key ingredient here is the Szechuan chilli bean paste (toban djan), which makes it taste like something you'd get at a proper Szechuan restaurant.  Of course, mine were a little messy, but they tasted fab!  I'm going to keep tweaking this recipe until I've got it exactly to my liking, and then I'll share it with you guys.

Happy Easter! Have a great weekend everybody!