Easter with a chance of meatballs
Good morning. We were driving under slate gray skies through a landscape of dun fields and naked trees when, suddenly, the sun broke through and there was color everywhere: spring, sprung. It felt like a kind of miracle, as if we were present for the exact moment when the natural world was awakening from wintertime slumber to push upward into green, into yellow, into life. Of course this made me think about dinner. (Everything makes me think about dinner.) My thought process was simplistic word association. Spring, rebirth, lamb. And a specific lamb at that: this recipe for lamb meatballs with spiced tomato sauce (above) that I dug out of the Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin's indispensable cookbook, "Sunday Suppers at Lucques," a long time ago, and return to time and again. It's a simple meal of crisp meatballs floating in a fragrant tomato gravy of North African origins, run through with orange juice and warm spices, anointed with feta and mint. It pairs well with pita and couscous. The labor's serial and not at all difficult, which makes it perfect cooking for a Saturday afternoon. Fire up the radio while you cook. The Yankees play the Rays in Tampa just after 4 p.m. Featured Recipe Lamb Meatballs With Spiced Tomato SauceWill there be glazed ham on the table on Sunday, with scalloped potatoes and loads of asparagus? There sure could be. That's an Easter tradition where I stay. But you might consider this new recipe from Genevieve Ko for lemon butter salmon with dill instead, topped with quick-pickled cucumbers and mustard seeds. Take a look at Sue Li's recipe for a carrot tart with ricotta and feta, too. Alternatively, you could stick with lamb again, in keeping with paschal tradition. I've lately been eschewing both the propane grill and the charcoal one to cook instead over a firepit, with hardwood burned down into coals and a grate over them, cowboy-style. Say, a grilled leg of lamb, turned and turned and turned over the heat until it's crisp and a few shades past golden, rare at its thickest part and less so at its thinnest? Let that rest for a while before carving, and serve with green goddess slaw and hasselback potatoes. Maybe some chewy lemon cookies for dessert? Not bad! There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go take a look. See what you find. (Yes, you need a subscription to do that. Subscriptions are the fuel in our stoves. They allow us to keep doing this work that we love. If you haven't taken one out yet, would you consider subscribing today? Thanks!) If you run into problems with your account, please write to us at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me, if you want to complain about something or pay a compliment to my colleagues: hellosam@nytimes.com. I can't respond to every letter. But I read each one I get. Now, it's nothing to do with Concord grapes or Bresse chickens, but a recent episode of The New York Times Book Review podcast put me onto Nettie Jones's 1983 novel, "Fish Tales," recently republished by Macmillan. It's legitimately shocking, sentence by rat-a-tat sentence, a thrill. I hope you didn't miss Frank Rich's fantastic essay about the history and state of Broadway, in New York magazine. It's a must-read. The stories within it will be on the final exam. I was just walking around the internet when I tripped over a hillock and fell into a time machine: T. Cooper's "First Aid," pandemic fiction in the Georgia Review, spring 2021. Finally, here's a new track from Lana Del Rey, "Henry, come on." Listen to that while you're rolling meatballs. I'll see you on Sunday.
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