We can’t quite move our dining outside just yet, despite a few promising bursts of sun, but bringing the outside in for springtime entertaining is a transition period well worth exploring. For your dining rooms, kitchens and tables, without pilfering your flowerbeds or being downright criminal in your local park, embrace what nature has to offer at this time of renewal. Head out into the countryside with boots, gloves and garden shears and bring back branches to make some dramatic background arrangements, but also fern shoots and spiky, new montbretia leaves, grasses and first wild f lowers in thin vases or small vintage glasses.

It’s stimulating and fun, I find, to look more closely at the everyday plants and trees around us and mix and match them. Pussy willow, horse chestnut blooms and young leaves, or any sprigs just coming into leaf or f lower with that new, vibrant, fleeting green, can look quite beautiful simply lain across the table. If you can bear to forgo their potential, fruit, cherry and early apple blossom branches are a gorgeous, ephemeral luxury. My linen and tableware are always plain when flowers and leaves are the stars. I like soft, crumpled, old linen and pale pastel napkins from Kathryn Davey in Ireland or Merci in France which set off the vegetation perfectly.

As for the cooking, well, goodbye stews and curries. Now I’m craving bright, punchy flavours in my mains with crunch, acidity and freshness. I can’t wait for strawberries and asparagus but they aren’t quite ready yet and it’s always worth resisting the flown-in versions – no matter how tempting – and waiting for our local produce.

I love the lightness and laziness of serving icy lychee martinis before a big lunch or dinner. There’s something decadent yet innocently retro about them that always seems to put my guests in a good mood. This is the time of year where I feel turf and surf really comes into its own and one of my favourite combinations is Bo Ssäm – slow-cooked, spiced pork shoulder, served with crisp salad leaves, hot sauce, good bread and oysters. Add a substantial vegetarian or vegan dish to the feast, put everything on the table at once, serve some good Irish craft beers along with the wine, and you can forgo the traditional roast lamb altogether this Easter.

Desserts, more than ever, need to be unfussy, and I love making free-form tiramisus with a lighter cream and a tangy fruit syrup rather than coffee for soaking the biscuits, with a big bowl of blueberries in lemon juice and zest nearby. As for the obligatory show-stopping chocolate cake, my Malteser creation is basically the world’s most crowd-pleasing Easter egg, but in cake form.

Bo Ssäm

I first discovered this dish during a severe attack of menu envy in David Chang’s flagship restaurant in New York, Momofuku Ssäm bar. I was perched at the bar with a rather boring date, and behind him was a much more interesting, smart New York family, three generations of them, with even the youngest kids tucking into the melting pork with their fingers, making the most gorgeous looking little parcels with salad, and slurping oysters in between mouthfuls.

For 6/8
12-hour marinade
7 hours cooking

1 pork shoulder of around 2kg, bone in if possible • 150g brown sugar • 100g rough salt

To serve

2 dozen oysters, shucked • 2 cucumbers, peeled and cut into batons • 2 lettuces, sashed, spun, dried, leaves separated • Sauces (below)

The day before serving the meat, mix the salt and sugar together, rub the entire surface of the meat with it then wrap it up tightly in clingfilm, making sure you gather all the salt and sugar which has fallen.

Set it into a large dish and leave it in the fridge overnight.

Eight hours before serving, heat the oven to 150°C. Remove the meat from the fridge, let it come up to room temperature, then brush off most of the sugar and salt. You can rub it with kitchen paper or even rinse it quickly under the cold tap, then dry with kitchen paper.

Set the pork into a dry oven proof dish, roast for 30 minutes at 150°C then wrap the meat in silver foil and lower the temperature to 120°C. Cook for seven hours. You can remove the foil, sprinkle with a little sugar, turn the oven up to 180°C and caramelise the exterior for ten minutes before serving if you wish.

Wrap the meat in salad leaves with cucumber and dip into one of the sauces below.

Oi Muchim Sauce

Serve this hot sauce on its own or mix with chopped cucumber batons alongside the meat.

2 minutes preparation

2 tsps rice vinegar • 1/2 tsp Gochugaru chilli or red chilli paste. • 1 tsp toasted sesame oil • 1/2 tsp salt • 1/2 tsp sugar • 1 tbsp finely chopped scallions

Mix everything together in a small bowl and leave to rest for an hour or so before serving.

Soy, sesame and yuzu sauce

2 minutes preparation

1 tbsp rice vinegar • 1 tbsp soy sauce • 1 tsp toasted sesame oil • 1 tbsp yuzu juice (or lemon or lime if you cannot find yuzu) • A pinch of sugar or a tsp of runny honey.

Mix everything together in a small bowl and leave to rest for an hour or so before serving.

Lychee Martinis

Have these ready to serve and avoid the usual time-consuming bartender duties as your guests arrive. Switch to beer and wine with the Bo Ssäm.

For 2
2 minutes preparation

100ml lychee juice (tinned) • 150ml chilled vodka • 1 dash chilled Vermouth • 1 dash chilled gin 1 teaspoon lemon juice • Ice cubes • Lychees on cocktail sticks to decorate

Shake all the ingredients in a shaker, pour into glasses and serve immediately.

Malteser Cake

Definitely one for recruiting the children! It’s a great cake to make ahead. You could also make a cupcake version with the same basic recipe and frosting.

For 8 to 10
15 minutes preparation
25 minutes cooking
1 hour resting
10 minutes decoration

Cake

250g softened salted butter • 200g self raising flour • 75g cocoa powder • 250g sugar • 5 eggs at room temperature

Frosting

350g softened salted butter • 250g Ovaltine • 250g icing sugar

Decoration

Large bag of Maltesers • Large bag of chocolate buttons

Heat the oven to 180°C.

Put all the cake ingredients into the bowl of your mixer and beat until the batter is smooth.

Butter and line two 22cm diameter sandwich tins, pour the batter into them and bake for in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Test at 20 minutes and stop baking when a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool slightly before turning out onto racks and cooling completely.

Beat the frosting ingredients together until they are nicely whipped up and fluffy.

Once the cake is completely cooled, sandwich the two cakes with a third of the frosting, then cover the cake completely with the rest.

Press the Maltesers and the chocolate buttons into the sides of the frosted cake, making geometric patterns as you wish. Leave to harden slightly in a cool place until cutting and serving.