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Easter 2015 - What's On Your Table?


Pool Boy

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We are making Mechoi style roast lamb (leg of, not shoulder) with carrot salad with tahini and crisped chickpeas.

Anyone else trying something new?

That sounds really good! The challenge, culinarily and otherwise, is that Easter dinner is also the Final Four Semifinals dinner. :-)

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I'm making a mix of old and new.  This is our menu:

Pan-crisped deviled eggs on French lettuces (old)

Sweet and sour eggplant crostini (new)
Roast leg of lamb with garlic and lemon (made this particular recipe once previously)
Spicy mint chutney (new)
Tzatziki (old)
Breaded fried asparagus (new, from Marcella Hazan)
Braised baby artichokes (new)
Rice pilaf (old; favorite family recipe of my husband)
Vanilla gelato (Dolci) with strawberry sauce (winging it)
 
The sweet and sour eggplant is from a Post "Plate Lab" recipe from DBGB Kitchen.  I made the roasted eggplant part of it yesterday, and it's not off to a good start.  It's calls for roasting for 30 to 40 minutes at 350F, which I thought was too low.  After 45 minutes, sure enough, the pieces still weren't nearly done, so I pulled them out and refrigerated. (I started too close to when I was going out.)  Later on, I roasted them at 400F until they finally seemed done.  It may be that my eggplants weren't small enough, but they were close on the total weight given in the recipe, so I don't know.  
 
I was contemplating a hollandaise for the asparagus and artichokes but decided that was too much last minute stress.  The tzatziki will be good with the lamb and the vegetables, so that's the call.
 
And, it's way too much food...
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Anyone else trying something new?

Nope, I'm going Old School. Dinner tomorrow will be straight out of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Beef Burgundy with mashed potatoes; asparagus with Hollandaise sauce; and, chocolate mousse for dessert. (I just saw "Julie and Julia" on TV earlier this week, so I got out my old copy of MAFC and decided that Julia Child really is God.) So, not a traditional Easter dinner or Seder. A perfect dinner party for 1962, though, for you "Mad Men" fans.

I was going to make Martha Stewart's upside-down Rhubarb Cake, but trips to FIVE different grocery stores landed me with no rhubarb at all. I even had to weather the zoo at Whole Paycheck this afternoon to no avail. So, chocolate mousse it is.

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I could google this, of course, but I'd rather ask: How do you pan-crisp a deviled egg?

You heat some olive oil in a skillet and put the eggs in, yolk side down, until they brown.  Takes maybe 3 or 4 minutes.  Then you plate them over mixed lettuces.  The dressing is a vinaigrette that incorporates the remainder of the egg stuffing that didn't go into the eggs. (The filling in the eggs should be flush with the top of the whites, not mounded, which also ensures there will be extra filling.)  Both the filling and the dressing have a couple of tablespoons of milk in them, which makes everything extra creamy.

http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pan-crisped-deviled-eggs-french-lettuces

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We put on a nice Seder Saturday night (brisket, spinach pie, asparagus, braised endives, and the ubiquitous mashed potatoes) so kept it simple for Easter.  Husband fired up the grill for steaks, Portobellos, peppers, eggplant, red onions and more asparagus.

To me there's something just wrong about eating lamb at Easter.  Sort of cannibalistic.  "Lamb of God" and all that.  And we don't eat enough ham to make roasting a ham a good investment.

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My friend announced that if I bought the lamb, she would cook it. So I picked up a 4-pound N.Z. boneless leg of lamb at Trader Joe's. My friend uses Julia Child's recipe, as did her mother, with cloves of garlic inserted into the roast and a coating of mustard mixed with soy sauce and olive oil. The lamb came with a netting which she removed as it would interfere with the crust, and tied it with twine which was comparitively easy to deal with. She served it with roasted fingerling potatoes tossed with olive oil, S & P, and spaghetti squash tossed with butter and Penzey's Tuscan Herb blend. The lamb was cooked to perfection.

We split the leftovers. She plans to make lamb curry this weekend, while I've been enjoying a warm slice of the lamb on a slightly larger piece of mediterranean flatbread spread with my homemade toum, some tzaziki sauce and thinly sliced tomato.

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