Easter is just round the corner and, just like I did last December with my tips on how to host a French holiday meal, I thought you might like me to outline how to host a French Easter meal.

If you celebrate Easter, you are probably already following your own traditions, but just in case you would like to add a French twist to this year’s celebrations, here are my recommendations for a delicious, traditional French Easter meal.

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This post is sponsored by Revol, a French manufacturer of top-quality ceramic cookware. Thank you for supporting the brands that support Chocolate & Zucchini.

It’s Confession Tuesday and I have one to make: I don’t really like spinach.

On my early twenties’ quest to rediscover and fall in love with the vegetables I’d grown up not liking (I’m looking at you, Brussels sprouts!) spinach was a total fail.

I blame years and years of school cafeterias and well-meaning summer camp counselors. Unless the spinach is of pristine freshness and cooked with fairy dust in really inspired ways, the metallic aftertaste makes me shudder and push my plate away.

So I hardly ever buy spinach at all. But on a recent trip to the Perche, when we got to the organic produce stall where we buy a week’s worth of marvels (and then some) the minute we arrive at the greenmarket, we saw he had gorgeous spinach that was selling out fast. Maxence was tempted, I relented, and we snatched up an armful.

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February 2 is La Chandeleur (Candlemas), a holiday that welcomes the first signs of spring. In France, it is traditionally celebrated by making crêpes, with a variety of superstitious little tricks to bring happiness and prosperity upon your household.

One of those tricks involves holding a coin in your left hand while you flip the crêpe pan with your right hand: if all goes smoothly and you haven’t dropped the crêpe or the coin or killed anyone, chances are you’re lying. But if you’re not, that is a very good omen. Another one is to throw the first crêpe of the batch (which is always a dud anyway) on top of a high cupboard, and leave it there for the rest of the year. Well, do you want good luck or no?

If you’re experiencing sudden pangs of anguish because you missed La Chandeleur, fret not: Mardi-Gras is coming soon (refer to this page to know this year’s date), and the French like their crêpes so much that they eat them to celebrate Mardi-Gras, too!

The recipe I use for crêpes was handed down to me by Maxence’s mother a few years ago. We had our own little crêpe party with our neighbors on Saturday night (the perfect equidistance from La Chandeleur and Mardi-Gras entirely fortuitous) and enthusiastically tested a variety of toppings — from nutella to crème de marron to maple syrup to lemon juice — only to conclude, as we unfailingly do, that beurre-sucre (salted butter and sugar) is really your best bet.

(Check my recipe for Savory Buckwheat Crêpes, , or galettes de sarrasin.)

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This post is made possible by the support of La Maison du Coco. More info below!

I am dedicating this particular post to the beautiful souls who follow me on Instagram, several of whom clamored for this recipe when I shared a casual shot of it in my Instagram story a few weeks ago.

“What is it?” they asked collectively. “It looks really good! Where’s the recipe?”

In truth, it is a recipe so simple, and one I make so often and with such ease, that I hadn’t thought to share it until then.

And I am glad indeed for the nudge, because it is the kind of dish that I would happily eat, in one variation or another, every day of the week, every week of my life. I can only assume, if it is true for me, that it will be true for some of you.

So there you have it: my recipe for red lentil curry (or dhal) with roasted cauliflower and crunchy coconut chips.

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