If anyone were to ask me how I would be eating my eggs this Easter, I’d say “scrambled with smoked salmon and cream, from their shell, with a dollop of caviar on top and with freshly toasted and buttered granary bread spread with home-made tapenade cut into soldiers for dunking!” Well, why not? There’s less fuss over Easter, freeing up time to get creative in the kitchen. You can easily kiddify the above for a family brunch, too, omitting the salmon and caviar and substituting the tapenade with Marmite, making it a winner all round.

With Easter upon us so early, it feels right to do things a little differently anyway. It’s a bit soon in the season for lamb, so do away with tradition and treat yourself to a roast rib of beef this year. Nothing is more magnificent to bring to the table and so long as you ask your butcher to French-trim it in advance, there’s no extra work involved. It’s also perfect for a family gathering as it will accommodate everyone’s tastes, with rare portions in the middle and more well-cooked parts towards the ends. And because it’s cooked on the bone, every slice will be succulent. If you’d like to jazz it up even further, my recipe for a Sichuan pepper crust will do the job.

Cracking open an Easter egg to discover what goodies are inside is all part of the fun on Easter Sunday. Sadly I’m a bit too old for that now, but I’ve come up with a perfect way to create some excitement for us adults. Everyone loves a chocolate fondant pudding, with its hot oozy centre. So to make it a bit special for Easter, try it with salted caramel. The caramel is scooped into balls, rolled in a pinch of salt, partially frozen and then sandwiched in the middle of the fondant mix. This way the pudding has time to cook on the outside, but leaves you with a mixture of runny chocolate and caramel in the middle.

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