Who knows what …

...will take your fancy over the Easter holidays when you've a long weekend to please yourself -

more to the point who knows what the weather will do this year – today it's snowing, with more promised and plummeting temperatures yet again.

It certainly doesn't make you think about Spring and the food you'd associate with it. It's difficult to strike the right note when you could be wearing thermal underwear and freezing or a sleeveless T shirt, shorts and flip flops!

We've covered all things chocolate for Easter, time to turn our attention to a few savoury bits and pieces to tempt you.

I'm sticking with the comfort theory and revisiting an old favourite or two.

There's nothing that says comfort better than home made bread – Soda Bread in particular.

Check out the Bread Label on the Blog – Saturday 19thNovember 2016 “Nothing is ever straight forward!” for the Soda Bread recipe or check out “I promised Easter treats and so …”  for a Cheese and Onion Muffin Loaf recipe too.

Two ideas to go with the bread – one cold, one hot.

The cold is the fastest paté you'll ever make.

Smoked Mackerel Paté

250g smoked mackerel

250g plain quark

2 tsps of creamed horseradish

glug of lemon juice

black pepper

Skin the mackerel, break up into small pieces and put into food processor. Add the quark and blitz with the mackerel then add the lemon juice, black pepper and horseradish, blitz again. You can gauge the consistency to your personal taste.

After you've made the paté you could add any of the following :

finely chopped sweet onion

finely copped black olives

chopped flat leaf parsley

finely chopped capers

Cut thick slices of soda bread, tear and spread liberally with the paté – that's lunch sorted.

If you've not come across quark it's a soft cheese made from skimmed milk – not nice on its own but a great product to use in this recipe – you'd never know it's healthy I promise you – it tastes great. You can use cottage cheese if you can't find quark.

The hot idea next …