rushing easter

The Easter holidays have required a short respite from all things food due to the overindulgence that occurs at the German’s family table. A far cry from the hard-boiled eggs of my childhood. There is without fail roast lamb, potato gratin, and green beans in butter. When we eat is also set in stone. We eat at 1 o’clock. On Easter, and on other holidays, this almost never happens since the preparation of Easter lunch is accompanied by a heated discussion on how it should be cooked, how many minutes in the pan, how long in the oven, and at what temperature. When to salt and when to cut. In the last 15 minutes before one o’clock, I can sense the anxiousness around me setting in, everyone simultaneously willing the poor lamb to roast faster. Once the minute hand has hit one and steadily marches on past it, there is a degree of defeat that hangs in the air. In the rush to get everything on the table while it’s still hot, never mind if it’s cooked, we inevitably get a few underdone slices of lamb on our plates to eat while the rest of the roast continues to…well, roast. Over the years I have seen this process repeated over and over again and I have come to realise that it is part and parcel of celebrating the holidays in their house. I have come to love this process. It’s hard not to when the food is always delicious and there is always far too much of it. This year we saw 6 racks of lamb, 5 kilos of potatoes, and 1 kilo of green beans grace the table. For five of us. With so much food on the table it becomes difficult to do it all justice. But we tried. Oh how we tried!