"Easter meals" news and stories

A few of the best links on the Web this week:

• Italy's asparagus season has begun!
• Looking to occupy some free time this weekend? Try snarky Food Writer Bingo.
• Two new food reality shows from the folks behind the Jersey Shore are looking for cast members.
• If you're planning to cook lamb for Easter, don't do it without reading this guide first.
• Ten years after Kitchen Confidential, chefs can no longer afford to be bad boys.

One of the year's most festive meals features the same components that make up perhaps the most standard plate in the American repertoire: eggs, bread and pork – commonly recognized as the nation's breakfast triumvirate – are the defining ingredients of Easter celebrations the world over.

Of course, few holiday observers plan to serve up scrambled eggs, bacon and toast on Easter Sunday: Diners will instead indulge in stout pink hams, hot cross buns, sweet yeast cakes, currant biscuits, cream-filled chocolate eggs, smoked kielbasas and gaudily decorated hard boiled eggs, paying homage to traditions forged in medieval Europe. While Americans have modified many of their inherited menus, the essential elements have changed little since the first Christians devised their holiday meals.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• This sugary legume is smarter than you.
• Is hopping chocolate your thing?
• Hold the mint jelly on this navarin of lamb.
• An Easter menu including mustard ham, asparagus and creme fraiche is one that we can get behind.
• Manage the in-laws with pink torpedoes or one of these cocktails.
• After a harsh winter, the White House garden rises again and is expanding.
• You've been visiting wineries all wrong.

When entertaining for friends and family, you want to pull out all the stops and pour fabulous wines -- but without blowing your budget. The Easter holiday is no exception. Here are five wines that are perfect for a typical Easter meal, which we figure will include a hearty main course (such as lamb or ham), potatoes, hot-cross buns and springtime vegetables (like carrots or asparagus).

The best part? These wines are each $10 or less!

Find our five holiday wine picks after the jump.

• Still tweaking your Easter Sunday menu? The Times offers up its recipe archives.
• "People don't just throw away an entire food culture after centuries." But with Irish cooking, they came pretty close.
• Which one's greener: the field tomato shipped from Mexico, or the greenhouse one grown in-state? We know which one is redder...
• At Recette in the West Village, hyperboles abound. (How often is head cheese compared to Johnny Depp?)
• Last time, 20 bottles of Loire wines; this time, 20 bottles of Riojas. Life is tough for wine panelists.