Easter at La Casa Rosa, Full Nest, Asparagus wee
Asparagus wee is the main problem at La Casa Rosa this time of year. Big bunches of really thin asparagus are everywhere and I use them instead of lettuce as a salad base. When everyone has asparagus wee the whole bathroom smells quite gross all the time. I remember reading an Iris Murdoch book where she writes in the first person as a man and says his “urine was deliciously scented with asparagus.” There is nothing delicious about it. Well, about the asparagus there is. The kids went out together in Lucca, which they hardly ever do, and they came home in a taxi through the thick fog up our quite scary mountain, nine minutes before curfew at 12.51am. I was upstairs in bed listening to them laughing in the kitchen and eating lamb and prune meatballs (from the Mamushka cookbook – recipe in a previous post). I’m so close to empty nest that full nest is incredible bliss. So, hot cross buns with cranberries and figs from the Waitrose magazine (and Sheba Anvari’s put-a-pan-of-water-in-the-oven-with-the-bake tip meaning cooked in the middle but not burnt bottom) on Good Friday. I mean, seriously, when they’re hot and you can taste the cardamom, dip in melted butter… and just….yes. Then Easter Sunday roast potatoes (don’t peel them or boil them, but cut them small, toss in lots of olive oil, garlic, rosemary and salt and cook until crispy) and lamb from the Honey and Co. cookbook. Well, I cheated and used Marco Pierre White too. Basically, Honey and Co. have you marinating the lamb in rose petals, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, ground coriander aaaand….garlic, olive oil. But there’s lots of naffing around with plums and taking the lamb out four times to do stuff to it. Marco just puts it in covered with foil for four hours. So I did that. Oh, and half a bottle of white wine, I used Prosecco. And cook forever. That’s it. The whole house smells SO good. Oh wait, chuck a lot of parsley over the meat before you serve it. It should just fall apart. Pomegranate seeds would be nice, but I didn’t.
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