Easter dinner ideas – a light spring menu with strudel of spinach or wild leek

You can jump right down to the easter dinner ideas here, or read on about easter food in Germany, and about wild leek.

The European wild leek´s botanical name is Allium Ursinum (ramsons and a lot of other English names), while the American wild leek is Allium Tricoccum (ramps). For kitchen purposes, the difference does not matter: The taste in both cases is very garlicky, but at the same time slightly sweet. Wild leek (it is called bear leek, Bärlauch, in German) is a protected plant in Germany, but not strictly so. We can gather a handful of the leaves, but must leave the bulb in the ground. You can also buy the leaves on the market, but since the plant has very specific requirements for growing and rots quickly, it is rather expensive. Which presents a temptation to some people – recently, a man was caught with 40kg of wild leek in his trunk (which means he will have to pay a huge fine or worse). So even if you should happen to visit Leipzig in springtime – where the forest will be looking exactly as it does on the above picture – remember to pluck or cut, never dig, only a handful per person…

Alternatives to wild leek: Other wild herbs, or simply spinach

I am lucky, though: We have wild leek growing in our own garden. It is one of the advantages of living in a cool, wooded low mountain range area of Germany. It is not so easy to grow fine vegetables around here, but wild herbs grow abundantly!

If you are among the majority of people who don´t have access to wild leek for free, or at a reasonable price, you can still make use of the easter dinner ideas below. I am giving you an alternative recipe with spinach. (If your family tolerates them, you can use wild herbs like nettles, dandelion leaves or goutweed. They are tender at this time of year, but if you have not tried them before, try a small amount in a soup or stirfry first to decide whether you like them.)

German Easter Food

The most prominent Easter food item in Germany is the traditional Easter bread (click here for the recipe) and, of course, hardboiled, colored eggs. The main meal of the day is a prolonged breakfast, or brunch, in most families. For a festive lunch, many families prefer Easter Monday which is a public holiday in Germany.

After the gloom of late winter…

Easter is a religious holiday, of course, but it is also very much a feast of joy for the beginning of springtime. Many German regions have delightfully bright snow in January. Not so delightful for commuters, perhaps, but certainly for children and other lovers of winter fun! But in mid-February at the latest, all its glory will be gone and there will be week after week after week of endless rain, often accompanied by harsh winds. The countrysite still has its beauties during this period, but in the cities life can seem almost unbearably dull and joyless. Some German regions address this issue traditionally with boisterous and somewhat unhinged carnival festivities. But the weather during the lenten period is certainly apt to instil some repentance into “every spirit upon earth”.

Easter: Christian, secular, or mixed

But then comes spring! It is hard to determine which parts of it are Christian, which are pagan, and which are just non-religious. But hardly anyone feels a need to determine that anyway. We live in a densely populated country, where it is simply impossible to avoid people with other views of the world. So we let everyone celebrate whatever it is they want to be celebrating, and just all join into the festivities together.

Easter traditions in Germany

Next to Christmas, Easter is a holiday with a much higer than average church attendance. But still much lower than at Christmas. And there is another difference: Everybody knows what event Christmas commemorates. But very many, including Church members, are not sure what Easter is officially about. Anyway, almost everybody will join in the Easter breakfast and egg hunt, very many people see the Easter walk as a vital part of their Easter Sunday. The Easter bonfires are also popular throughout Germany, and there are many regional traditions, most of which are seen as harmless family fun rather than a matter of conviction. You can read more about German Easter traditions here.

What is German Easter food like traditionally?

There is no one traditional Easter menu, or dish, in Germany. Strangely, there are traditional foods for Maundy Thursday (spinach – often with eggs and salt potatoes, and/or carrots) and Good Friday (fish), but not for Easter itself. Some people have roast lamb but many find it a bit tasteless to kill and eat one of the dear little creatures they have just seen hopping around joyfully on their easter walk. So the lamb-shaped cake is much more popular than actual roast lamb. And of course, who would have the heart to tell the kids that they are having the Easter bunny for dinner?

False Hare and fresh greens

But many families do have “false hare” (Falscher Hase) for Easter, which is simply a meat loaf filled with a hardboiled egg (or several, depending on size). Others – especially if they are not Catholic and have not had fish on Good Friday – will eat trout. Whatever it is, it will usually be something light and “spring-like”. Carrots, spinach, cauliflower,kohlrabi,green beans and fresh herbs are a welcome change and remedy after Christmas overeating, kale feasts and greasy carnival doughnuts. In former times, of course, people had the opposite problem. After Christmas, the food supplies got more scarce, limp and dull from day to day. By March, there was only some cabbage and root vegetables of questionable quality, pickles, dried peas and beans, and grains left, but nothing fresh. Apart from farmers on the one hand and nobility on the other, most people did not get to eat much meat or milk products, either. So the first fresh green herbs and vegetables were appreciated even more than they are today.

White Asparagus

If Easter is in April, many people see it as the perfect opportunity to have white asparagus for the first time in the year. German Easter dinner ideas will be centered around it. The most popular way to serve it is with steamed potatoes, sauce hollandaise or butter-roasted bread crumbs, and a thin slice of smoked ham. Strew some parsley on top – and that´s it. (If you would like to try this, please cook the asparagus in only a little water and use that to make the sauce. Also, you should not throw the peel away to soon – you need to boil it with the asparagus and only throw it away afterwards.) The perfect example for a typical German Easter meal – fresh and very light, relying on the ingredients´ natural taste. Which also means it is crucial for success to use really fresh, quality ingredients. Farmers´ markets are crowded with customers shortly before Easter. Many towns put on an extra market on the Saturday if the regular market happens to be on another day of the week.

This year, Easter is in late March. We don´t live in a region where farmers grow asparagus much, and it is still too cool for it. But, as I said, we have loads of wild leek in our garden, so I will use that for our Easter Monday lunch. An alternative would be spinach. I will give you both recipes, along with more Easter dinner ideas as inspiration for your own Easter dinner menu. Below the two recipes, you can find some suggestions for starters and dessert. And suggestions for foods to go with the strudel.

German Strudel recipe with wild leek or spinach

Ingredients

For four persons, you will need:

Potatoes, mealy – 750 g

Wild leek (leaves only) or fresh spinach – 50 g

Flour (all purpose or white spelt) – 250 g

Rapeseed or olive oil – 20 ml

Optional: Emmental cheese (or Cheddar, old Gouda or similar) – 100 g, OR one egg yolk and some sesame seeds

2 eggs

some salt (about a teaspoon), a pich each of white pepper and ground nutmeg if you like it

For the spinach strudel only: 2 large cloves of garlic and a chalotte

What to do

1. Put potatoes into a pot, almost cover them with water and bring to a boil. Let them boil for about 20 minutes until they are soft.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, wash the wild leek/spinach. Spread it on a clean tea towel to dry.
3. Chop the wild leek/spinach and stir in the oil. In case of spinach, chop garlic and chalotte finely and stir them in, too.
4. Heat the oven up to 175 grade Celsius.
5. Peel the potatoes, purée them with a potato masher (never use an electric blender for potatoes!). Stir in eggs, flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
6. Divide the dough in two halves (approximately – exact measuring is not needed). Put one half aside, knead wild leek/spinach into the other half.
7. Roll out both halves of the dough separately (add a bit of flour if they are too sticky which will probably be the case with the green dough). Then put the green dough on top of the white and roll them up together.
8. Put the roll on a lined baking tray and bake it at 175 degree Celsius for 15 minutes. Then sprinkle with grated cheese and bake for another 20-25 minutes. OR first bake for 25 minutes, then brush with egg yolk, sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake for another 10-15 minutes.

More Easter dinner ideas – starters, dessert, and what to have with wild leek/spinach strudel

Wild leek/spinach strudel as a main or side dish – what to have with it

Wild leek or spinach strudel is perfect as a main dish, accompanied by some green salad – for example, lettuce or lamb lettuce with sliced radishes and vinaigrette dressing. But if you want more variety on your plate, asparagus is a perfect match. You can combine, or replace, this with freshwater fish (cooked, not fried). Any mild and tender meat or poultry will be good with it, too. It will also go well with some of the hardboiled eggs from your Easter breakfast table – after all, you have to do something with them! You should not have your strudel with potatoes, rice or pasta since it is already made mostly of potatoes itself. However, if my examples seem to be too light and therefore non-satisfying, why not have some mushrooms in cream sauce with the strudel? The strudel itself does not need any sauce or condiment, but the food you combine it with may. I would choose sauce hollandaise or béchamel, but with eggs I would have mustard or mustard sauce. I would not expect tomato sauce to match the strudel.

Starter dishes

As a starter, I would choose a light soup like cream of kohlrabi, of fresh peas or cauliflower; or carrot soup. Even just a clear vegetable, chicken or beef broth with a few fine noodles would be good. I would certainly choose something mild and tender, seasonal if possible. In some regions of course, especially when the date of Easter is early, the “seasonal” vegetables will still be the ones that have been around throughout winter, like beetroot, celery root or onions.I would avoid those if possible, except for carrots.

Dessert and drinks

Now for dessert. You will hardly ever be served cake as a dessert in Germany (in fact, I never once experienced that) but if you think differently about this matter, carrot cake or carrot muffins would be a good choice! A matching German dessert would be vanilla ice cream with one of the following: Apple sauce and whipped cream; raspberry sauce; hot cherries; Rumtopf (berries that have been soaked in rum) or Rumrosinen (raisins, again soaked in rum). All of these are conservative choices, and of course you could have some mousse of white wine or lemon or even something really fancy… Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments!

As a drink, water is always my first choice (not for health or temperance reasons but because I just like it best and it matches everything) but to guests I would offer elderflower drink or white wine. Another drink that is very popular in Germany and would go well with the wild leek/spinach strudel is apple juice or any other fruit juice mixed with sparkling water.

Do you have an Easter dinner tradition? What is it?And what are your Easter dinner ideas? Please feel invited to leave a comment and share your experiences.