It's Time for Honey Baked Ham

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April 1

Good morning. What I smelled during a 10-minute bicycle ride today: wood smoke, diesel exhaust, grass, frying bacon, rotting wood, bleach, balloon rubber, dollar pizza, a tendril of burning weed, the sharpness of electrical ozone, cart coffee and, last, the strong, sweet scent of lilies — Easter in the air. Good Friday!

There'll be ham this weekend, at least for some: honey baked (above) or layered into sliders with Swiss cheese and a buttery glaze. If you're amenable to the cut but didn't manage to order one for the holiday, you can make what's called a fresh ham: a pork butt scored and roasted beneath a lacquer of maple syrup and balsamic vinegar, with pecans and candied ginger. How about some Sweeney potatoes to go with it? Some creamy macaroni and cheese?

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Honey Baked Ham

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Some may prefer a paschal lamb, maybe butterflied with lemon salsa verde or braised with celery root purée. (I love this kind of Swedish version Craig Claiborne hustled up in the 1950s, with coffee and a sprinkling of sugar.)

Others will make a carrot maqluba or the creamy spiced eggplant known in India as bagara baingan to break the Ramadan fast.

Me, I'll freestyle, cooking without recipes as has become my weekend passion, working off prompts that I give myself. For example: kielbasa with pierogies, applesauce and sautéed cabbage.

The kielbasa and pierogies are store-bought (though you can make your own pierogies easily enough), but the applesauce and cabbage are mine. Peel and chunk some Honeycrisps or Pink Ladies, then cook them soft in a pot with lemon juice, a cinnamon stick and perhaps a pod of star anise. These will mash together beautifully. (Remove the aromatics!) Then rub the sausage with a little bacon fat and roast it in a hot oven. Slice some red cabbage and a small onion or a couple of shallots, and cook all that in melted butter until just soft. Boil the pierogies briefly before sautéing them with butter so they go crisp on one side. Put a dollop of applesauce, a hunk of kielbasa and a serving of pierogies on each plate. Then hit the cabbage with a few tablespoons of prepared horseradish, ideally the sort cut with beets, and add the mixture to each plate. Serve with sour cream and mustard. That's a terrific meal.

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