Ottolenghi’s delicious Easter feast menu

“For Easter this year, I’m going ‘less tradition, more flavour’,” says Yotam. “With the help of Ottolenghi Test Kitchen stalwarts Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller, my Easter table will centre around chicken with Steph’s spice, from my recent book Comfort, with potato salad and roasted carrots with dukkah. No simnel cake, but custard Yo-Yos with rhubarb icing, instead. Here’s to a delicious Easter!”

Your relaxed menu for 4

• Spiced chicken
• Potato salad with pancetta, paprika and chives
• Roasted carrots with curry leaf dukkah
• Custard Yo-Yos (sandwich biscuits) with roasted rhubarb icing

The recipes

Chicken with Steph’s spice
“Helen got this jerk recipe from Stephanie Kamener, a Jamaican chef she worked with in Melbourne. Many years have passed since it was scribbled down on a scrap of paper but it’s been with Helen ever since.”

Verena’s potato salad
“Growing up in Germany, Verena remembers two camps when it came to potato salad: camp mayo and camp oil/broth. This is an oil/broth-based version, more prevalent in Swabia and Bavaria, southern Germany. It’s not as heavy as the mayo variety and gets a sort of creaminess from the starch released by the potatoes as they sit for a couple of hours in the warm broth.”

Roasted carrots with curry leaf dukkah
“On holiday in Sri Lanka a few years ago, Helen got very into the little pot of dukkah mix that was often on her table in the evening. So into it was she that there soon appeared two pots each night. On the last night of her holiday, the chef – Madhura Geethanjana – wrote the recipe down on Helen’s napkin, calling it his ‘nut crumble’. It’s such a lovely image and act of sharing.

Dukkah keeps well in the fridge for up to 5 days (or even longer in the freezer), so make more than you need. It’s lovely sprinkled over all sorts of things: soups, roasted vegetables, chicken, grilled fish and leafy salads.”

Custard Yo-Yos with roasted rhubarb icing
“Yo-Yo biscuits were a staple of Helen’s Antipodean childhood. Their popularity shows that the old-fashioned combination of roasted rhubarb and custard takes a lot of people back to the sweet treats of their youth.”

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