This is the second part of our Easter/Passover holiday gathering recipe roundup, with our favorite dishes which will guarantee you a successful dinner table. (If you missed part 1, which covers appetizers, salads and sides, it should have arrived earlier today in your inbox.)

Brunch & Main Dishes

Whether you’re throwing a brunch, lunch or dinner, we’ve got you covered.

• Cheddar and Chive Savory Dutch Babies

• Cheese and Blueberry Blintzes with Blueberry Preserves Syrup

• Tartines with Herb Cheese and Smoked Salmon

• Quiche with Ramps, Bacon and Gruyere

• Roasted Beets and Whipped Feta Tart

• Ramp, Leek and Goat Cheese Tart

• Spinach and Basil Stuffed Shells with Creamy Fontina Sauce

• Pomegranate Glazed Slow-Roasted Salmon with Fennel & Leeks

• One-Pan Roasted white fish with Tomatoes, Zucchini and Olives

• Phyllo Torte Stuffed with Chicken (or Ham), Ricotta and Swiss Chard

Eggs

Easter eggs are not just for dyeing! Here are our favorite recipes to celebrate ovum.

• Scotch Eggs with a Perfect Runny Yolk

• Classic Deviled Eggs

• Quiche with Ramps, Bacon and Gruyere

• Baked Eggs with Creamy Greens and Garlic Butter Toasts

• Stir Fried Farro with Garlicky Kale and Poached Egg

• Croque Madames

• Extra Crispy Chilaquiles with Salsa Verde, Chorizo and Egg

• Spinach, Cheddar and Egg Breakfast Tarts

Desserts & Sweet Treats

Let’s be honest, Easter is mostly about the sweets. There has to be something chocolate, but also it’s the beginning of berry season. So why not both?

• Pistachio Cream Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Mocha Hazelnut Icebox Cake

• Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats with Toasted Marshmallows, Pretzels and White Chocolate

• (Perfectly Gooey) Fruity Pebble Rice Krispie Treats

• Ruffled Phyllo Pistachio Cream Pie

• Magic Lemon Custard Cake

• Blood Orange and Almond Upside-down Cake

• Lemon Poppyseed Buttermilk Pound Cake

• Chocolate Frangelico Mousse

• Half-Baked / No-Bake Blackberry-Vanilla Swirl Cheesecake

• Summer Berry Tart with Lemon Mascarpone Cream

• Blueberry-Lemon Curd Tartlets with Almond Crust

• Strawberry Lemon Tiramisu

• Mini Dutch Babies with Lemon Curd and Blueberries

We hope you find something in our recommendations that your family and friends will love! If you do, drop us a comment, or mention us @nerdswithknives in your socials and let us know how it went!

We’re not religious people. That is to say, we do certain things in life religiously, but our Jew-ish and Anglican-ish membership cards are tucked way at the back of our wallets behind our coffee stamp, library card, and a crumpled, illegible receipt that seemed important at the time. We do celebrate both Easter and Passover, but culinarily only, and occasionally on the same day. Our Passover picks are decidedly non-kosher, and our Easter suggestions lean egg and chocolate rather than hot cross buns. (Also, Stissing House makes the best and we can’t compete.)

In short, these recipes are the foods we love, but do make sure they fit in with your gathering’s religious or dietary theme.

Our Easiest Appetizers & Sides

Whether you’re hosting a brunch, lunch or dinner — or bringing a dish — sometimes it needs to be something super quick to prepare.

Here are our favorite appetizers and snacks that only take a few minutes of prep and a handful of ingredients.

• Easy Baked Brie With Honey And Pistachios

• Crostini with Blue Cheese and Roasted Grapes

• Crostini with Blistered Cherry Tomatoes, Burrata and Chive Oil

• Tartines with Herb Cheese and Smoked Salmon

• Marinated Goat Cheese with Garlic and Thyme

Here are two appetizer boards we love putting together:

• Cheese and Charcuterie

• Tinned Fish Board

Here are some more delicious options with a little more cooking involved.

• Scotch Eggs with a Perfect Runny Yolk

• Classic Deviled Eggs

• Chicken Liver Pâté with Thyme and Brandy

• Goat Cheese-stuffed Phyllo Triangles with Hot Honey Drizzle

• Ultra-Smooth Hummus with Miso and Charred Scallions

Tasty Side Dishes

Whatever youre serving, you’ve got to have some fun sides to go with it. Most of these can be made ahead and reheated just before serving, to make hosting a breeze.

• White Asparagus with Black Garlic Aioli

• Crispy Baked Herb Polenta Fries with Lemon Dipping Sauce

• Spicy Cheddar Cornbread Pudding

• Grilled Eggplant Parmesan with Roasted Tomatoes, Burrata and Garlic Herb Breadcrumbs

• Roasted Beets and Whipped Feta Tart

• Cumin-Roasted Cauliflower with Whipped Feta

• Cheesy Zucchini and Corn Fritters with Herb Sour Cream

Delicious Fresh Salads

Every feast needs a fresh salad, whether it be elaborate or simple.

• Blood Orange and Endive Salad with Pickled Red Onions

• Black Rice Salad with Red Cabbage and Herbs

• White Asparagus with Black Garlic Aioli

• Blood Orange Salad with Shaved Fennel and Pistachios

• Orzo Salad with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Olives and Feta

• Herbed Potato Salad

• Warm Kale and Caramelized Wild Mushroom Salad

• Red Cabbage Salad with Roasted Cipollini Onions

• Pesto Couscous Salad with Mozzarella and Tomatoes

• Swedish Cucumber Salad with Red Onion and Dill

Easter and Passover mains, egg dishes and desserts are in part 2, arriving in your inbox momentarily…

Just a very short note that, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day next week, we’re giving away three copies of our first book, Cork and Knife, which showcases alcohol as the one ingredient that will make any recipe great.

We showcase a full range of beer, wine and spirit-enhanced dishes, including entrees and desserts that all benefit from the addition of a little splash of something-something.

Kenji López-Alt, chef and award-winning food writer, said this of Cork and Knife:

Emily and Matt show you how to use vodka to make extra crispy batter, heighten the aroma of garlic sauce with tequila, and bring perfect balance to dishes just by adding white wine. Through their knowledge of booze cooking science, you’ll make classic dishes that pack a delicious punch. So put on your apron, pop a cork, raise your glass and get ready to cook!”

As an existing newsletter subscriber, you don’t have to do anything to enter the contest. You’re already in with a chance!

We’ll pick out a winner on Tuesday, March 17th at 11am EST.

And as a reminder, you can always buy the book for yourself or a friend at any of the links on our site, including (our preference) from your local independent bookshop.

Order the book!

Good luck!

Ah, March. The days are growing longer and the snow is finally melting. We won’t mention the still-gloomy skies and the dog-poop minefield which magically appears everywhere. Who cares? Spring is on its way! Though don’t get too excited, even the earliest seasonal growth is still a month away and it can still snow in April.

Wa waaaaaa.

As we develop recipes, one of the subjects we often think about is thrift. As the cost of groceries rise (thanks, tariffs and global instability) and incomes stagnate (thanks, CEOs), we all try to make the most of our budget. Unlike in spring and summer, when cost-effective seasonal produce abounds, the end of winter is much less generous. Luckily there are a few ingredients that hold strong, regardless of season: cruciferous vegetables, potatoes and offal.

You may have heard that 2026 is the year of the cabbage. It’s true, look it up!

Cabbage is one of the most affordable vegetables out there, and at least some varieties are available all year round. Green cabbage especially is often the most cost effective vegetable out there, averaging around $.50 - $.75 a pound, with red cabbage coming in close behind.

Cabbage turns sweet and tender when roasted, like in our newest recipe, Miso-Butter Roasted Cabbage on Garlic Toast.

One of our other favorite ways to use cabbage is in salads, like this Red Cabbage Salad with Spicy Miso-Ginger Dressing and also this beautiful Black Rice Salad with Red Cabbage and Herbs.

Cauliflower is another great cold weather vegetable, especially here in the Hudson Valley where it’s a been a major crop for decades. It’s wonderfully versatile, and is the star of our Ultra Silky Cauliflower-Cheddar Soup with Garlic Butter Croutons, and also Mughlai Cauliflower (in a creamy almond curry sauce).

Then there’s the humble potato. There’s a reason why just about every cuisine across the globe uses potatoes in one form or another. We love them in all their forms: red potatoes are fantastic in soups and stews, like this Creamy Chicken and Potato Chowder, Sweet potatoes are fantastic Roasted with Miso-butter and Maple Syrup .

Our most recent potato recipe happens to be one of our favorites, Ultra Crispy Garlic-Parmesan Smashed Potatoes, They somehow manage to be both crispy and creamy, with a delicious garlic-butter topping. So good.

And lastly we come to our most divisive thrifty ingredient: offal. Offal has the unique position of both being considered an expensive delicacy (foie gras, sweetbreads), and the yukkiest of peasant food (tripe stew, kidney pie).

Unsurprisingly, many ingredients that used to be considered “off cuts” and therefore extremely inexpensive have now been elevated to the fancy section of the market. Have you seen the prices recently for oxtails, pork shanks and beef cheeks? Crazy expensive.

There’s one ingredient that has remained affordable and that is chicken livers. I know a lot of people just can’t deal with liver, but if you can get over the eww factor, chicken liver can be an incredible ingredient.

Several times a year we are assigned to make chopped liver. It used to be just for Passover, but the request has creeped into just about every Jewish holiday. We usually go to Emily’s brother’s house in New Jersey, where her dad’s side of the family gather for various celebrations. To be fair, our version of chopped liver is definitively non-traditional (and super non-kosher). In fact, it’s really Chicken Liver Pâté with Thyme and Brandy. Sometimes we make 2 versions that differ only in texture: a coarse one that is more like a country pate and a smooth one that is more like a mousse. Both have their fans.

What economical food choices are you making these days? Drop us a comment in the chat. We’d love to hear from you! And we hope that Spring is coming, wherever you are.

Cabbage is having a moment and we are here for it.

This simple recipe makes the most of cabbage’s sweetness, by giving the wedges a quick sear and then roasting them until they turn tender and silky.

To turn it into more of a lunch, we take garlic-rubbed toast (with an optional schmear of soft goat cheese), top it with a meltingly fall-apart cabbage wedge, and drizzle over a delicious miso-butter sauce.

Without the toast, this cabbage also makes a perfect side dish for a protein, like grilled chicken or pan-seared salmon.

Get the full recipe here!

Those who follow us on social media may have noticed a not-so-subtle change in the tone of some of our posts. To put it bluntly, we’ve become a bit political. Let me rephrase that: we’ve become open and public about where we stand in terms of what is happening in our country. We’ve always been proud liberal lefty progressives, but except for an occasional opinion in an article, we’ve kept our political leanings separate from Nerds with Knives.

In 2016, when he-who-shall-not-be-looked-at-if-you-want-to-keep-your-breakfast was chosen as the Republican nominee (for the first time, JFC), we posted our honest reaction. It went something like this “It’s nice to know that, even though this world can feel like a dark and frightening place sometimes, good things still happen. Yes, an infected toenail that fell off and became vaguely sentient is the GOP nominee for President of the United States, but on the flip side, a package arrived at Nerds with Knives headquarters and there was bourbon inside it!”

Some of the comments we received were disappointing.

We kept politics mostly private until Winter, 2026. During the violence perpetrated by ICE in Minnesota, and the grisly, pointless deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, posting only about food just felt wrong. We didn’t want to be silent about our feelings of sadness and disgust. It wasn’t a planned change, but it was an honest one.

The reaction, at least initially, was again … not great. We lost hundreds of followers (eventually more than 1,000) and had many, many messages telling us to shut up and just post food. Telling us to keep politics out of our content. Calling us idiots, morons, lib-tards, etc.

Honestly, that just made us dig in and go harder. If you don’t think food is political, if you don’t think immigrants deserve respect and human dignity, if you don’t think victims of abuse should be believed, then you’re not our audience. And we’re okay with that. We feel that honesty and integrity are more important to us than any follower count.

In the end, it turns out that many (many) more people agree with us, and we have felt incredible support on our decision to speak out. Our community is not only larger, but more aligned with what we believe in. That is incredibly gratifying and we are so grateful.

We have no plans to stop, both with (hopefully) great recipes and (hopefully) beautiful photos and (definitely) loud mouthed opinions on what we feel is important.

If you’ve signed up for our newsletters at some point in the past, are firmly opposed to our stance and don’t relish the idea of more of the same, please do unsubscribe, and we wish you well with no hard feelings.

If you want to share this with family or friends who you believe it would resonate with, please do, and we’d be delighted to have them join our community.

Whoever you are, you can always, we hope, find good food on our blog. Always remember that over 60% of farmworkers on American farms are migrant laborers, including undocumented workers. Most of the food you eat every day has been helped to your table by immigrants. Feel free to chat in the comments with thoughts and questions, and we’ll be sure to reply.

Thank you for reading, and we’ll talk with you again soon.

T. S. Eliot was wrong. February is by far the cruelest month, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. Once I’m done with my SAD light therapy, that is.

The Romans had it right — for a long time, they didn’t even name the period between December and March, considering winter to be “month-less”. The new year would begin with a purification, or “februum”, involving the intentions of making a new start, a fresh sweep, if you like. Eventually the Gregorian calendar reset the New Year and moved those personal resolutions back to Jan 1 (see previous newsletter), but the February climate reminds us we’re still in the thick of winter.

There’s a good reason why we crave those colorful, glitzy showcases of the month. Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, Valentine’s Day: there’s not much else out there to catch our magpie eyes. These unnatural explosions of glamor delight, but also appall. The world should not be this ostentatious at this time of year.

We no longer mark februum, but many of do observe Lent, and Fat Tuesday (or Pancake Day for us Anglicans) is our last chance, traditionally, to be indulgent, to make all the yummy stuff.

So let’s make some yummy stuff.

Pantry Organization Part II: Spice up Your Life

Last year we took the — for us, shamefully rare — step of replacing almost all of our pre-ground spices. It was past time. We ordered a fresh batch of spices and powders from Penzey’s, 1/4-cup containers sized just right so we wouldn’t end up with an excess that would go stale in a few months. Since they’re stored in a pull-out drawer and we want to be able to identify a jar quickly, we label and date the tops with green frog tape (white electrical tape would work too.)

Once those spices are refreshed, why not use them to make a simple, quick vegetarian dinner. Our Spiced Halloumi Tacos with Avocado Crema feel summery, but are great all year round. We sprinkle a homemade “taco” spice mix over sliced halloumi cheese, then pan fry them until they are deep golden brown. Drizzled with a deliciously tart and creamy Avocado Crema and topped with crisp radishes and pickled red onions. Pair them with a good beer and pretend you’re somewhere sunny.

Another recipe that benefits from good, fresh spices is The Most Delicious Air Fryer Salmon Bites with Spicy Mayo. We have a secret ingredient that makes this salmon extra tasty, and, even better, it’s a healthy dinner you can make in about 15 minutes. They come out tender, buttery and golden brown. Serve it with our Spicy Mayo Dipping Sauce.

Once the spices are refreshed, our next task is to clear out the pantry. Any perishable good that we haven’t touched in months should go. (We’ll only re-order an item if we have a plan to use it in the next few weeks. That eliminates a lot of the flours that we have, optimistically, bought a bag of and left to go stale.) And — we live in the real world, after all — we’ll pick up some fresh pantry moth traps.

Optimistic but questionable experiments in preservation, taking up precious space, have to go. That jar of lemons kept in salt for three years? Gone. Emily doesn’t care for the taste of preserved lemons, and I honestly didn’t care enough to press the point. As I sluiced the remnants of the jar down the drain, they gave off a sharp medicinal odor that was exactly — exactly — like the Dettol detergent used to clean my school hallways when I was a child in England. Perhaps the process was worth it for that one sensory moment.

Downstairs, I know we have jars of eggs put up in limewater, stored during the Great Egg Shortage of a couple of years ago. Eggs preserved that way might be just about palatable for up to a year, but at this point, they must surely be rank poison. To be honest with you, I think they have to be buried deep in a hole. If you live nearby and notice a waft of sulphur on the breeze, sorry.

How do you deal with food organization in your kitchen and pantry? What are your biggest challenges? Let us know in the discussion!

With love to you from us,

Matt and Emily

xxx

We had a recipe social media post scheduled for last Sunday. But after Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot multiple times by ICE agents, I cancelled the post.

Instead, I wrote a short piece about the importance and standing up for our beliefs … And quickly lost several hundred followers.

I just couldn’t talk about Peruvian chicken, no matter how delicious it might be (it is really, really tasty though). It felt trivial and disingenuous to talk about food, after seeing the video of a man executed for helping a woman who the agents had pushed to the ground. I felt sick all day. Weepy one moment, furious the next.

Alex Pretti was not the first person murdered by ICE (we are all still reeling from the public murder of Renee Good) and I’m sad to say he likely won’t be the last. 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025. Just because their deaths weren’t captured on video doesn’t make them any less tragic.

Matt and I have posted about politics before, making public our sadness and disappointment at Trump’s re-election. And our fears for the country we both love so deeply. We’ve posted about Gaza, and the heartbreaking situation witnessed by the whole world.

Inevitably, we would get some comments in sympathy, but also those in the vein of “no one cares what you think, you’re a food blog” and “I don’t come to your site to hear about politics, just give me a recipe for taco seasoning” (irony doesn’t seem to exist for some people).

And I’ll be honest, the blog has recently become my main income source (due to the collapse of the TV/Film industry — but that’s another story) and I worried that I might be jeopardizing any growth. But last weekend Matt and I discussed it and we realized that we don’t care about retaining the approval of people who disagree with us on these fundamental issues.

Staying silent might be safer, but it also felt like complicity. Honesty and integrity mean more. We weren’t marching in the sub-zero weather putting our bodies at risk, but if we can use our platform to help amplify the things we feel are important, we will. We’ll use it to be honest with ourselves and our readers.

It’s been a couple of days since that post, and I’m happy to say we’ve now gained more followers than we’d lost. And even better, there’s a sense of community now that goes beyond a love of good food and pretty photos. We’ve found people who care about their neighbors, regardless of where they were born.

So if you’re new here, welcome. We’re happy you found us and we look forward to sharing with you, honestly.

In our house, a special dinner calls for English-style roast potatoes, which are parboiled, then roasted submerged in duck fat. They are sublime. Shatteringly crisp on the outside, with a fluffy and creamy center. But they are a lot of work and can be quite messy. Also, duck fat, in this economy?

Lately, to save us a little time, effort and cash, we’ve favored this recipe for super crispy smashed potatoes. They are just as delicious as the formal English roasties, but they’re quicker to make, easier to prepare and more adaptable. Another advantage is that the potatoes don’t need to be peeled, so there’s less work and they’re more nutritious. It’s a win-win-win-win.

You can find the recipe here.

Happy New Year, friends.

First, allow us to re-introduce ourselves…

At this point you may be saying “Who are you? And what are you doing in my house?” Well. Excellent questions both.

We are Emily and Matt Clifton, otherwise known as Nerds with Knives. We’re not by any means professional chefs, but we are passionate home cooks. We develop our own recipes, test them thoroughly and photograph them in our little studio in Beacon, NY.

Emily’s culinary adventures began in her hometown of New York City, where she ate pernil and kimchi more often than peanut butter and jelly. Now she develops recipes that combine locally-sourced ingredients into simple, accessible and delicious dishes. When she’s not cooking, writing, or taking photographs of radish tops, she’s probably hard at work editing a movie or television show, which she’s done professionally for the last twenty years.

Matt is a Kentish Man, sci-fi nerd, chicken-keeper and occasional poet. Professionally, he does something with computers, but almost more than anything else, he enjoys swearing at his vegetable garden.

Together, we’ve written and photographed two cookbooks: Cork and Knife, and The Ultimate Dutch Oven Cookbook.

At some point in the past, you signed up for our newsletter and then we stubbornly refused to write any, firstly because we are rotters, but more importantly, because we never seemed to have any time. If you don’t want to get our updates, there’s an unsubscribe button at the bottom of this letter. But we hope you’ll stay with us. And if you especially enjoy the article, why not share it with a friend?

We’re going to be talking about housekeeping a little later on, but first, some … well, housekeeping.

When you signed up to this newsletter, we sent out writing and recipes via Mailchimp. As you may notice from the layout of this email, we’ve now moved over to Substack. We think it’ll help us to better grow our community and have more conversations with you, the people who we write for.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the blog is when a reader tells us they’ve made a recipe for their family and, quote, “my Dad loved it!”. It really is the best feeling. With Substack, you’ll continue to get the email newsletters, just as before, but you can also (using the link at the bottom of this article) hop onto the Substack site, reply to the posts, and chat with the Nerds with Knives gang.

Alright, that’s the technical nonsense over with. Let’s add some color to this cloudy January and talk about a few ways to preserve our food — and our pantry space — into the New Year.

Seriously Lemony Lemon Curd

As you can probably tell, we really like lemon. And when we eat something that claims to be “lemon”, we want to taste real tartness, not just sugar that a lemon once sat next to in a grocery aisle. So we take our curd seriously.

Lemon curd is one of those foods where the taste of the home-made version is so much better than store bought, that we only ever eat it when we’ve cooked up a batch in our kitchen. Many years ago we had incredible home-made curd in Scotland (and ended up accidentally not paying for it — it’s a long story) and have tried to do it justice ever since.

But the process is so simple, and the results so delicious, we don’t hesitate to recommend you give it a try. All you need are lemons, butter, eggs and salt.

Go on, try seriously lemony lemon curd. Let us know how it turns out. And if you’ve ever accidentally dined and dashed, let us know by clicking through to the comments below! (We won’t tell a soul, promise.)

Good Intentions

Of course, it’s the season of personal resolutions. As far as the kitchen goes, we have several, sometimes conflicting, needs, which include a) wanting to have a wide range of interesting, fresh or shelf stable, ingredients, b) needing to be able to find said ingredients at any given moment, and c) keeping our food budget within reason. Here are our food organization steps for January.

Stocking Up

The urge to hoard, to amass enough provisions to last out the ice (even though the grocery store is just a short drive away) is strong in a Northeast winter. But before we bring in more frozen meat, we take an inventory of our freezer stocks to rotate out some of the older items — often chicken thighs or pork tenderloins — that we put away earlier in the year.

We also converted the rotisserie chicken carcasses that we’d amassed in the freezer over the last few months into several batches of good chicken stock. Our book, The Ultimate Dutch Oven Cookbook, has a couple of recipes for chicken and vegetable stock, and you may have your own favorite method.

This stock is the basis of many of the soups and stews we make throughout the year. We recently blogged Tortellini Soup with Spinach and Sausage, turning store-bought frozen tortellini into a hearty winter stew, and it quickly became a staple.

We’ll talk a little more about pantry organization in February, because we’ll still be in the thick of it.

A Final Word from our Sponsors

Speaking of preserves, we recently talked about the delights of conservas, the tinned fish culture particular to the Iberian Peninsula, which is making inroads on the American grocery scene. We’ve fallen in love with Fishwife’s Mackerel with Chili Flakes and Mussels with Sweet Pepper and Garlic but they have a whole range of tinned seafood to try out. And their package art is gorgeous. Go check out their stuff!

(Fishwife is one of our affiliate sponsors, and it helps us out when you buy from one of the links we post. Thank you for supporting our site!)

With love to you from us,

Matt and Emily

xxx