Easter

Easter is a popular celebration across France, with a big focus on food! Known as “le repas de Pâques”, the French Easter meal is a joyous family fare with staple features like lamb, eggs, asparagus and strawberries. It’s all about celebrating the arrival of Spring and the rebirth of nature! Read along for some of my insight regarding a traditional French Easter menu, to help inspire you in the kitchen! About Easter weekend in France I feel like the French are particularly fond of Easter weekend, which often marks the …

A wildly popular side dish in France, Vichy Carrots feature perfectly tender carrot coins cooked in butter, sugar, and water until it reduces into a sweet buttery glaze, which is then finished off with fresh parsley. This easy and inexpensive recipe is a perfect weekday side, that feels luxurious enough to brighten any festive meal as well!

With Easter just a few days away, here is a little roundup of my favorite Easter-inspired French recipes from the blog: breakfast and brunch ideas, mains for hosting, springy sides and delicious chocolate desserts. Bon appétit, happy Easter, or as we say in France: Joyeuses Pâques !

This Provençal Chickpea Salad is traditionally made for Palm Sunday – the Sunday before Easter. It’s quick and simple, budget-friendly, made with pantry staples, and oozes salty flavors with the addition of anchovies and black olives, and a nice crunch from the celery. Because of the protein from the chickpeas, it’s nutritious enough to be a meal on its own. But really, it can also double as a the perfect side or starter to any Spring or Summer table. 

The traditional lamb is a must on every Easter table in France. And although it usually presents itself in the form of a glorious Gigot d’Agneau (roasted leg of lamb), you’ll find that variations are totally acceptable nowadays. So since I like to keep holidays stress-free (and sheet pan recipes seem to be all the rage this year), I decided that a one-pan-lamb-and-all-the-Easter-fixings would be my choice for this holiday. This One-Pan Garlic Lamb Chops with Potatoes and Carrots recipe is quick to assemble and -bonus! – a snap to …

Making brioche for Easter morning is a dear French tradition that I follow religiously every year – even in Canada (although you’ll know that I am partial to brioche all year round). And for this year’s Easter holiday, I am excited to be sharing with you my recipe for this Orange and Anise Sugared Easter Brioche, also known as a “Mouna”. This plump and fragrant Mouna brioche hails from the Pied-Noir (“black-foot” in French) and Oran Cuisine, from Algeria. If you don’t know, Pied-Noirs was the name given to the …

In France, Easter classically calls for the “Gigot d’Agneau” (leg of lamb), accompanied by roasted potatoes and an assortment of seasonal vegetables (such as a Jardinière de légumes, Vichy Carrots or Haricots Verts). But lesser known (even to most French people) is the traditional Easter Beef, a regional speciality served in the southern Massif Central of France.

With the arrival of an early Spring, I’m getting excited about asparagus! And for me, freshly crisp asparagus calls for a Sauce Gribiche. A great classic of French Cuisine, the Gribiche is a flavorsome mayonnaise-style sauce packed with capers, cornichons and fresh herbs. And while still today an utter classic, it is one of those concoctions that’s still hard to put a label on … Is it a sauce? A mayonnaise? A dip? A condiment? A relish? I like to think it can be any of them! (I mean, is …

We’re one week away from Easter weekend and I know a lot of us are getting excited about brunch! In France, Easter brunch habitually involves a freshly-baked brioche on the table, like a buttery Fallue in Normandie or the anise-flavoured Caccavellu in Corsica. But this year, I wanted to bring back a yesteryear recipe known in French as a “Pascade”. This wonderful French-style Dutch Baby Pancake (which in France falls under the “crepes” category) is generously puffy and versatile, and ideal as a last-minute brunch idea.

From our last recipe – Crepes From Brittany – to today’s recipe, a Corsican Caccavellu sweet bread. Yes, it’s quite a far stretch, with as many kilometers as there are cultural specificities that separate these two regions – which sit literally opposite on the French map. But on many levels, they are not so different, if you ask me. Both the Brittany and Corsican people are known to be proud, tremendously proud, of their origins, dialect and people. Both deeply attached to their roots and unique cultural heritage, these regions …