New traditions

I live alone. It's fine, I have plenty of company when I want it, I'm on the introverted side (though not the kind of introvert that finds lockdown a godsend; I have been Whatsapping like fire). But I do love to cook for other people. I mostly don't get to do that, but Easter and Christmas plus a few other dates I descend on my parents' house, with ingredients, and cook like fury for meals on end. Not just the big production number dinner, I like to cook the in-between meals too. Loads of veggies for the dead time between Christmas and New Year. But also, the big production number. Roast duck at Christmas, roast lamb at Easter. Roast gawd-knows-what for Big Family Christmas which is almost never on 25th, and involves ham or beef or conceivably even turkey.

I really enjoy it. The planning and management. The getting down of the Good Plates from the Special Inaccessible Shelves. The sodding endless washing up. Even the shrivelled fingers from carrot peeling duty. I can't do any of it this Easter. I can't be doing with mini roasts of pity for solo diners. Besides, it's chicken n fish week. So my Easter Sunday dinner was... that old standly, Greek pasta with prawns.

Lawks, it was delicious. Ugly, but absolutely delicious. Wasn't sure I'd be able to get all the ingredients till yesterday, so it could have been Georgian salmon with garlic saice (that's up soon, don't worry). But there was a pack of prawns left in Waitrose when I finally made it there yesterday evening. It was happening. I've had to open a bottle of wine for this recipe, which sadly means I'm drinking tomorrow too. Bank holiday waiver, mmh?

Recipe is from Taverna, a very, very lovely Cypriot cookbook whose author I could have met last July in Bath while on holiday, but I binned out of her event. I am a fool, she was making snacks, and the book is brilliant. Especially for snacky, veggie things without many ingredients, which is handy at the moment. This is more of a production, but not Ottolenghi-lengths.

I needed chard for JacobinDay on twitter weeks ago. hmph. But so pretty!

Garlicky prawns with orzo
Raw prawns, garlic, butter, lemon, oil - cook these at the end

4 chard stalks
2 onions
Garlic
100g orzo
150ml white wine
400g tomatoes (chopped, or if you insist grated and skins discarded, honestly who has the time for this even in lockdown?)
500ml chicken stock or similar

Chop the chard stems, onions and a garlic clove and sweat them off for 10 mins. Then stir in orzo for a minute, add the white wine and bubble off for a minute, tomatoes, stir for a minute, and add the stock, hot. Bring to the boil, turn down to simmer, seethe it well for 10 minutes. (If this seems like a risotto... cough... well, you could prolly do it with rice if you wanted.)

Then shred the chard leaves and add them for another 10 minutes simmering. Recipe says with lid on but I had plenty of liquid so cooked it off a bit more.

Towards the end of this 10 mins, melt your butter with a splash of oil, cook the garlic briefly, hurl in your prawns and cook until... cooked.

Season everything well. Gloop it into a bowl (learn from my plate mistakes). It's gloopy here but that's not pointless liquid, it's delicious.

Original serving. I had seconds.

It's not the same as a family meal. I miss eating with other people. But as a new recipe for a weird old day, it's fab.

Hope you're having a happy easter. I have a Lindt bunny for afters. Hurrah!