[1] How about an Easter ice cream gift (all photos © eCreamery).

[2] Four flavors specially labeled for Easter.

[3] The four flavors scooped.

Is there special Easter ice cream? Well: The Happiest Easter Wishes / Are Served in Ice Cream Dishes / Easter Eggs Are Fine / But eCreamery Ice Cream is Sublime.

So rhymes eCreamery, the online specialist in personalized ice cream pints.
 
 
ICE CREAM FOR EASTER!

eCreamery’s Easter Collection includes four pints of “eggstra-ordinarily” delicious ice cream, each with a creative label:

 
If the four Easter flavors aren’t right for you—for example, you don’t want nuts, chocolate, whatever—you can create a custom gift on the website.

The ice cream is sent in an insulated shipper. So even if the recipient doesn’t get home until the end of the day, the ice cream will still be frozen solid.

This year, bypass the conventional Easter basket of goodies in favor of the eCreamery Easter Ice Cream Collection. There’s also a flavor of the month club.

Ice cream is happiness condensed, said one pundit. And an ice cream Easter gift is sure to “make some bunny’s day.”
 
> Get your Easter ice cream at eCreamery.com.
 
> The history of ice cream.
 
> The different types of ice cream and other frozen desserts.
 
 
ABOUT eCREAMERY

Since 2007, eCreamery has been churning out superpremium ice cream: classic favorites, original flavors, and even customers’ unique creations.

Made in small batches, the ice cream is hand-packed and hand-labeled.

You can customize labels with your own photos and your titles, or shop eCreamery’s library of more than 50 artwork designs to create pints for birthdays, congratulations, get well, sympathy, thank you, and other special occasions and holidays.

How can you resist these tiny chocolate lambs for Easter?

New this year from one of our favorite chocolatiers, L.A. Burdick, these works of chocolate art are individually handcrafted.

That means that no molds are used to create the chocolates. Burdick’s skilled chocolate artisans create them entirely by hand.

Burdick is famed for its chocolate mice and penguins, and special editions such as bees, bunnies, cats, elephants, pigs, turkeys, and sheep.

Each lamb has a dark chocolate ganache center flavored with ripe strawberries fresh rhubarb.

They are enrobed with white chocolate and hand-piped to create the fleece and eyes.

The “keeper” wooden gift box is tied with a ribbon and holds eight chocolate lambs.

It will delight any lover of fine chocolate to whom you give them.

The lambs are available to ship now through April 22, 2022.

All Burdick chocolates are made with all-natural ingredients and are preservative-free.

They are gluten-free and are prepared in a dedicated gluten-free kitchen.
 
 
> Get your chocolate lambs at BurdickChocolate.com.
 
 
> The history of Easter candy and the Easter basket.
 
 
> The history of chocolate.

[1] Handmade chocolate lambs from L.A. Burdick (both photos © L.A. Burdick).

[2] The beautiful wood gift box can be used for jewelry and keepsakes—or filled with more chocolate!

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] Homemade marinara sauce, ready in 20 minutes. The recipe is below (photo © Taste Of Home).

[2] Start the day with an egg on toast, with some marinara sauce in-between (photo © DeLallo).

[3] For lunch, marinara sauce on a chicken cheeseburger (photo © Sun Basket).

[4] Or perhaps, a meatball sandwich—it doesn’t have to be a hero (photo © St. Pierre Bakery).

[5] For dinner, place a protein—chicken breast, fish, tofu—on a bed of marinara sauce (photo © Osteria 57 | New York City).

[6] Pizza waffles. Here’s the recipe (photo © Chef Emily Ellyn).

[7] Crab cakes marinara (photo © Good Catch Foods | Facebook).

[8] You can replace the mozzarella in this Mozzarella Marinara recipe with paneer or any of the melting cheeses—Colby, Emmental/Swiss, Fontina, Havarti, Monterey Jack, Muenster, Provolone, Smoked Gouda and numerous others (photo © Bar Primi | NYC).

March is National Sauce Month, and before the month is out we have a tip for people who have never made homemade marinara sauce—the simplest pasta sauce after butter or olive oil—before. This easy recipe will show you how you can have a simple pasta sauce on the table in just 20 minutes—pretty much the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta.

In fact, you can make this simple homemade marinara sauce recipe in the time it takes to boil the pasta!

Thanks to our friends at Taste Of Home for the tip, and to Deborah Markwood of Chester, Virginia who submitted the recipe.

In addition to the marinara sauce recipe below, you’ll find:

> Uses for marinara sauce, beyond Italian dishes.

> The difference between marinara and tomato sauce.

> The history of marinara sauce.
 
 
WHAT IS MARINARA SAUCE?

Marinara is a simple tomato sauce made with garlic, crushed red pepper, and basil. It’s not the same as tomato sauce. See below for the difference.

It can be pepped up with the addition of capers, olives, other spices (including those from other cuisines, such as curry), and a splash of wine, among many other variations.

A 28-ounce can of Cento crushed tomatoes is $2.19 at Target. Pasta sauces in that price range typically have a lot of sugar (partially to compensate for lesser-quality tomatoes and herbs).

Marinara is short for “alla marinara,” Italian for “seafaring,” which colloquially translates to “mariner style” or “sailor-style.”

The name harkens back to when it was the preferred sauce to top the meals of Italy’s merchants during long expeditions at sea [source].
 
 
The History Of Marinara Sauce

Tomatoes, a New World crop, first arrived in Europe in 1529 with the return of the Spanish conquistadors.

In 1519, Cortez found it growing in Montezuma’s gardens, and it became part of the culinary bounty brought back to Spain along with cacao, chiles, potatoes, turkey, and other foods.

Here’s the history of tomatoes.

Marinara sauce was developed later in the 16th century, likely in the Naples or Sicily area of southern Italy.

Pasta had arrived much earlier, with Arab traders in the 12th century and earlier with Arab invaders of Sicily in the 8th-9th centuries (the history of pasta).

The first reference to a tomato sauce is in the 1692 Italian cookbook “Lo Scalco alla Moderna” (The Modern Steward) by Chef Antonio Latini. Here’s an interpretation of the original recipe.

A recipe for pasta with tomato sauce appears in the 1790 Italian cookbook, L’Apicio Moderno, by chef Francesco Leonardi.
 
 
RECIPE: QUICK MARINARA SAUCE

 
Ingredients For 8 Servings (Photo #1)

 
Preparation

1. COOK the vegetables. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a small saucepan. When the oil is hot and shimmering, add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion is tender, about 3 to 5 minutes.

2. ADD the brown sugar, minced garlic, basil, and oregano. Cook for an additional minute, until the garlic is fragrant and the spices have bloomed in the oil.

3. ADD the can of crushed tomatoes along with the bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil before reducing the heat to medium-low. Simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, until the liquid is reduced and the flavors have come together.

4. TASTE and adjust the salt if desired. Remove the bay leaf before serving.
 
 
USES FOR MARINARA SAUCE BEYOND PASTA, PIZZA,
MEATBALLS, & CHICKEN & EGGPLANT PARM

We’re skipping over the obvious Italian dishes, the less obvious (polenta, e.g.), and the Italian fried dipping group (arancini, calamari, mozzarella and zucchini sticks). You already know to serve marinara sauce with them.

Instead, we offer some newer takes:

 
We have a friend who uses leftover marinara sauce to make minestrone.

She dilutes the sauce with water and adds canned beans, mini elbows, grated parmesan, and mixed chopped vegetables (cook until the vegetables are tender).
 
 
WHAT IS TOMATO SAUCE

While marinara is a simple, relatively thin sauce, tomato sauce is a thick, rich, complex sauce.

It’s one of Escoffier’s five classic French mother sauces: sauce tomat.

While there are variations of sauce tomat, a French cook starts off with salt pork or bacon, onions, carrots, and a roux (flour and butter).

Then, fresh tomatoes, bay leaves, garlic, and veal stock (or in modern times, the more readily available chicken stock) are added, and the sauce simmers for hours.

The long simmer time thickens the sauce and deepens the flavors.

Sunday gravy or Sunday sauce is an American version of the French tomato sauce. It usually contains additional meat, such as pork ribs, ground beef, or Italian sausage [source].

Tomato sauce’s rich flavor and thick texture make it better suited for smothering foods, as with gravy.

Tomato sauce can be used for chicken cacciatore or pasta, but the complexity of flavors would get lost under the mozzarella and toppings of pizza.

The first Easter cake we baked was a coconut-covered lamb. We purchased a special mold, baked a yellow cake, frosted it in white, and coated it with shredded coconut. Was it a masterpiece? Probably not, but our memory recalls that everyone was delighted with the effort. In recent years, however, we have forgone the effort of baking a special cake and bought one instead: a Lady M Mille Crêpes Cake.

Lady M mille crêpes cake is a boon for fine cake lovers around the world.

It’s our Top Pick Of The Week, for Easter or anytime you want a very special, very elegant piece of cake.
 
 
WHAT’S A MILLE CRÊPES CAKE?

What’s a mille crêpes cake? It’s a stack of paper-thin crêpes, the same crêpes you might order for brunch, topped with a filling and rolled up. In a crêpe cake, nothing is rolled: The flat crêpes are brushed with light pastry cream and stacked. To see how thin they are when you make your own, see photo #6.

At Lady M, the top crêpe is caramelized crust. Then, each flavor of crêpe cake is finished in a different style, as you can see from the photos.

This leads us to a disclosure: While “mille crêpes” indicates 1,000 crêpes (mille, pronounced meel, is the number one thousand in French), there are actually some 20 crêpes in each cake, each crêpe handmade in the Lady M kitchens.
 
 
A NEW FLAVOR DEBUTS

The latest mille crêpes cake flavor to launch at Lady M is Tres Leches (photo #1). We’ve had a sneak peek at it (and a sneak taste as well), which is why we’re ordering it for Easter.

There’s currently free shipping: Buy two cakes (any flavor), and get free shipping. That’s one cake for us, and one for a gift (or two different flavors for Easter dessert).

> Get your crêpe cakes here.

> The history of crêpe cake is below.

> The history of crêpes.

> Make your own: a dulce de leche mille crêpes cake recipe.

> A vanilla mille crêpes cake recipe.
 
 
LADY M CRÊPE CAKE FLAVORS

While there are seasonal flavors, the current roster of 9-inch mille crêpes includes:

 
There are seasonal flavors: Chestnut for the holidays, Champagne for the new year, Passion Fruit for the summer, and so on. Keep checking and you may find Purple Yam, Red Bean, and Salted Caramel.

You can even order a three-tier wedding cake, each layer made of “mille” crêpes.

The Lady M kitchens never stop experimenting with new flavors. Last year, specialty flavors included Popcorn and Blueberry Cheese.

Dear Lady M: How about a savory crêpe cake? Remove the sugar from the pastry creme (or use a béchamel) and add minced basil or spinach, with finely-grated parmesan—or some other delicious concoction.

We know you can do it!
 
 
THE HISTORY OF MILLE CRÊPES CAKE

Crêpe cakes have long existed in French pastry as “gâteau de crêpes.” The modern mille crêpes cake was invented by a Japanese pastry chef Emy Wada.

Seeking to improve her knowledge of Western pastry, Emy traveled across Europe. While in France, she fell in love with crêpes.

Back in Tokyo, Emy began making crêpes. Because crêpes are very thin, they tend to dry out quickly. Emy discovered that stacking them in layers with a filling in between preserved their freshness. Yes, necessity was the mother of invention.

She called her creation “mille crêpes,” a portmanteau of two classic French desserts: crêpes and mille-feuille* [source].

Emy began selling different flavored crêpe cakes at her Tokyo pastry shop, Paper Moon Cake Boutique, in the 1980s.

They were a hit (which the first bite will tell you). In 1985, after more than a decade of supplying cakes to retailers around Tokyo, she opened her own store, Paper Moon Cake Boutique.

In 2001, she expanded to supplying cakes to fine retailers in New York City, like Dean & Deluca and Takshiyama. In 2004 opened her first cake boutique in the U.S., on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, under the name Lady M [source 1] [source 2].

Lady M now sells crêpe cakes at locations around the world, and online.
 
 
BEYOND CAKE: MORE CRÊPE RECIPES

[2] Chocolate mille crêpes cake.

[3] A slice of Earl Grey mille crêpes cake.

[4] Matcha is a popular flavor.

[5] A pistachio-lover’s delight.

[6] A homemade vanilla mille crêpes cake. Here’s the recipe (photo © Hummingbird High).

*A mille-feuille (pronounced meel-FOY), meaning “a thousand leaves,” is also known as a Napoleon, vanilla slice, and custard slice, is a pastry that traditionally has layers of puff pastry alternating with layers of pastry cream or custard.

[1] Paella on the grill (photo © Sur La Table).

[2] Potato and chorizo paella. Here’s the recipe (photo © Black Gold Farms).

We love elaborate rice dishes, so paella recipes are always a special-occasion treat. March 27th is National Paella Day, so we’re getting out the paella pan and cooking up a party.

A paella recipe typically makes enough for a group. It’s also a party pleaser, whether you’re sitting at the table or having a buffet.

You can make paella on the grill; you can make it with quinoa instead of rice, and with turmeric instead of saffron.
 
 
> The history of paella.

> Other uses for a paella pan.

> The history of rice.

> The different types of rice.
 
 
MORE PAELLA RECIPES