Easter was sort of an important holiday for my family when I was younger. My dad – before becoming a teacher – was a minister, the pastor of a large church in a small town. Easter mattered, but unlike Christmas (an endless parade of obligations finally ending Christmas afternoon), after the main event was over (Sunday morning services), the whole family would sit down to a late afternoon dinner.
For the first part of my life, those dinners were almost always simple and traditional. We ate ham, probably with a brown sugar glaze and studded with pineapple rings and neon red maraschino cherries; steamed asparagus; dinner rolls; and my grandmother’s signature potatoes.
Late in childhood, that menu began to change. Dad left the church and Easter became less of a religious holiday and more of an opportunity to gather with friends and neighbors. Some of our guests and neighbors didn’t eat pork, so we didn’t always have ham. The canned dinner rolls of the late 70s and early 80s were replaced by homemade breads – sometimes my mother baked, sometimes a guest, sometimes me or my brother displayed our early forays into baking.
I don’t remember Easter desserts. As a kid, I was of course focused on Easter candy. Easter candy is better than Halloween candy. This is indisputable. Don’t fight me on this. I will win. I’m pretty sure my mother’s solution to the spring/summer dessert problem was (in often still is) angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream. After a few weeks of phoning it in on the dessert front, I’m actually including a real desert this week. It’s not angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream.
So despite all that, this week’s menu isn’t an Easter dinner. It’s just a dinner you can share with family or friends or neighbors, if and when it’s safe.
White Asparagus with Hollandaise
As my siblings and I got older, left home, settled down all over the country and the world, that table did change. Our traditions changed. Unless I was back at my parents’ house, I didn’t celebrate Easter at all – so much so that we once scheduled a trip to Paris to visit friends forgetting we were landing in an overwhelmingly catholic country on Good Friday – the Friday before the holiday. Almost everything was closed until Tuesday. But not all the street markets were. Parisians were stocking up for their own Easter dinners, and at the front and center of every vegetable seller’s stall, beautiful stalks of huge white asparagus looking like marble columns.
Serves 4 as an appetizer
12 pieces white asparagus
4 slices prosciutto or serrano ham
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp cold water
1 stick unsalted butter
½ tsp kosher salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tsp finely chopped dill
Dill sprigs as garnish
Prepare a large pot of heavily salted boiling water and an ice bath.
Clean and trim the asparagus, removing any brown spots, and trim the tough ends. If the pieces are large, consider peeling the lower ½ of each stalk to remove fibrous skin.
Blanch the asparagus for 2 minutes in the boiling water, then immediately shock in the ice bath.
Remove the asparagus from the ice bath and drain and pat dry.
Carefully arrange three spears of asparagus in a bundle, and wrap with a piece of prosciutto.
Set aside the bundles and preheat your oven to 350°F.
Prepare a hollandaise sauce (or make stick blender hollandaise).
Melt the butter in a thick bottomed pan and keep hot.
Add the lemon juice, egg yolk, and 1 tsp cold water to a metal bowl.
Holding the bowl with a hot pad or dry towel, hold high over a medium flame while whisking rapidly until a thick foam – a sabayon – has formed.
Slowly add the hot, melted butter into the sabayon, whisking to combine.
If the sauce breaks, add a few drops of water and whisk well until the emulsion forms again. Then continue.
Add the dill.
Keep the sauce in a warm place.
Warm the asparagus and ham bundles in the oven for 5 minutes.
Arrange on a plate and top with dill hollandaise.
Garnish the tops with dill sprigs.
Garlic Herb Popovers
Remember how I said that the canned dinner rolls of the 70s had been replaced by home baked breads? Popovers were one of them. I hated the transition. Sweet, butter loving soft dinner rolls were a favorite of mine as a kid. That hasn’t really changed. And I won’t lie, if you put a plate of Parker House Rolls on the table in front of me, I might not notice the rest of dinner. But the first popovers I had … in comparison to those pillow white wonders of American food technology … they tasted like burnt scrambled eggs.
My tastes have changed now. These quick, light, and crispy popovers are scented with garlic and thyme. They give all the satisfaction for a bread course without the weight. Plus they feel fun and fancy and not at all like burnt scrambled eggs.
Makes 12 popovers
1 ½ cups whole milk
1 ½ cups AP Flour
3 eggs
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp softened butter
¼ tsp kosher salt
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp fresh thyme (leaves stems discarded)
Preheat your oven to 425°F.
Generously grease the cups of a popover pan or a muffin pan with softened butter.
Whisk together the milk, eggs, flour, melted butter, salt, garlic powder, and thyme until a smooth batter has formed
Place your popover or muffin pan in the oven and preheat for three minutes.
Remove the preheated popover pan from the oven and fill each cup halfway with batter and return to the oven and cook for 30 minutes.
Serve immediately.
Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad
This dish doesn’t have a story. It doesn’t remind me of a place or person, or a time I fell down and scraped my knee and magically came up with a salad. It’s a salad. It’s a good salad, with some sort of fun spring flavors that go well with a lot of the other things here. It also still relies on winter or window garden ingredients, so it’s not in season or out of season, which is important because right now it’s Spring two days a week, Summer three days a week, and Winter in between. You thought you were gonna get a week without me talking about the weather didn’t you. Well, there you go. That’s what you get for thinking.
Serves 4 as a side salad
16 brussels sprouts
1 small shallot
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp granulated sugar
½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp smooth Dijon mustard
4 dried apricots
¼ cup Marcona almonds
4 large or 8 smaller mint leaves
Using a mandoline or sharp knife, peel, trim, and slice the shallot very thinly.
Add the shallot to a non-reactive bowl with the sugar, salt, and vinegar.
Allow to marinate at least 15 minutes and up to two hours.
Clean the brussels sprouts and clean away any brown or loose leaves.
Using a mandoline, or a very sharp knife, cut the sprouts (though the stem end) into very thin slices.
Slice the apricots into fine slices.
Slice the almonds.
Chiffonade the mint leaves.
Drain the shallots, reserving the liquid.
Whisk together 2 tsps of the shallot liquid, ½ tsp Dijon mustard, ½ tsp black pepper, and 2 tbsp olive oil to make a dressing.
Toss the shaved brussels, apricots, and almonds with the dressing.
Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.
Immediately before serving, add the mint leaves and toss to distribute.
Pommes Flora
The one thing that never changed on that table at home? Gram’s potatoes. As my mother tells it, my brother once called from London to get the recipe. He served it to a flat full of American expats. I can’t remember if that was for Easter or Thanksgiving, but I’ve always assumed Easter – because Easter meant Gram’s potatoes. My grandmother’s name was Flora Anne. These are almost but not quite her potatoes. These are a little less modest, and a little more frenchified. I’m going to call them “Pommes Flora.”
4 large russet potatoes
6 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp finely ground black pepper
¼ cup heavy cream
1 tsp white vinegar
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Wash, peel, and remove any discolored spots from the potatoes.
Using the fine side of a box grater, shred the potatoes into a bowl of cold water dosed with 1 tsp of white vinegar.
Drain the potatoes in a fine strainer, rinse with cold water, and squeeze out as much water as possible.
Mix with melted butter, cream, and salt.
Arrange in a 2-3 inch-thick layer in an oven proof pan or casserole.
Bake until beginning to brown on top.
To serve, brush with melted butter and top with ground pepper.
Herb Roasted Lamb
Americans should eat more lamb. Not for any high minded environmental or other reasons. It’s just good. I like meat that has a little more flavor, and lamb, mutton, goat … has more flavor. That flavor that gets described as gaminess – I like to think of it as terroir. You can actually taste the soil. I like that. That being said, if you’re one of those people that just doesn’t like lamb (I’m not gonna get you to try goat, am I…), you can also make this dish with beef (choose a well marbled roast – this isn’t a recipe for lean beef). It won’t be as good as lamb because it’s not lamb, but it will be a pretty nice roast beef.
1 bone in or semi boneless leg of lamb
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp loosely packed thyme leaves
2 tsp loosely packed rosemary leaves
¼ cup loosely packed parsley leaves and stems
½ tsp lemon zest
Peel, trim, and microplane or finely mince the garlic.
Finely chop the herbs.
In a mortar and pestle, or using the flat blade of a knife against a cutting board, work the herbs, salt, and garlic into a paste.
Add the herb/garlic paste, the lemon zest, and the black pepper to the olive oil.
Spread evenly over the surface of the roast.
Refrigerate uncovered for at least two hours.
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Roast the lamb until the internal temperature in the thickest part of the leg is 125°F for medium rare.
Allow to rest 10-15 minutes in a warm place before slicing.
Serve with Minted Sauce
Minted Sauce
When I was a kid, lamb chops or roast sold in the supermarket came with a little plastic square of mint jelly. I thought that was weird as all hell, but when I tried it … well, it was still weird as all hell, but mint and lamb do pair well together. This sauce is really almost an herbed demi-glace – but the addition of finely chopped mint right at the end gives it a bright hit of minty menthol that really makes it delicious.
4 cups dark chicken stock or beef stock
½ roma tomato
1 small shallot
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp softened butter
½ tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp fresh ground black pepper
¼ cup loosely packed mint leaves
Peel, trim, and slice the shallot.
Add chicken stock, the half tomato, shallots, bay leave, and thyme to a thick bottomed pot.
Bring to a simmer and cook until reduced to 1 cup.
Strain and remove the solids.
Return the stock to the pan and reduce to ½ cup.
Remove from the heat, and swirl in the softened butter.
Add the salt and black pepper, and taste for seasoning.
Chop the mint leaves very finely and fold into the sauce.
Serve immediately with roasted lamb.
Not Beach Pie
This dish does have a story. Sort of. This recipe is a mishmash of one of my favorite pies and a favorite shortcut. Chef Bill Smith helmed one of my favorite restaurants – Chapel Hill North Carolina’s Crooks Corner – for almost 30 years. His Atlantic Beach Pie – a light lemon pie with a saltine cracker crust is world famous. I ate a lot of it when I lived in North Carolina – it showed up at every potluck, bake sale, etc. I saw – and ate it everywhere. Despite the number of meals I ate there, I honestly can’t say I ever ate Atlantic Beach Pie at his restaurant – I was more of a frozen mint julep fan – but that pie was magical.
This isn’t that pie. This is another saltine crusted, whipped cream topped, light lemon pie. Instead of the classic filling used in Atlantic Beach pie, this one uses a wonder of modern laziness and technology. You literally throw some eggs, butter, sugar and a whole darned un-squeezed un-peeled, un-anything’d lemon into a blender and it magically (with some baking) becomes pie. This is the kind of modern innovation I can get behind.
Crust
12 oz saltine crackers (1 ½ sleeves)
10 tbsp melted butter
¼ cup AP flour
¼ cup light corn syrup or wildflower honey
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Add the saltines to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely crushed.
Add the flour and pulse to combine.
With the food processor running, add the melted butter and corn syrup or honey.
Grease your pie or pan and press the crumb mixture into the pan to form an even crust.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove and allow to cool completely before filling.
Filling
4 eggs
1 large lemon
1 stick unsalted butter
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp kosher salt
Cut the lemon in to 4-8 pieces.
Cut the butter into small cubes.
Add all ingredients to the container of a high-speed blender.
Blend until smooth.
Pour into a prepared crust.
Bake at 350°F until set, but not browned, about 30-40 minutes depending on the depth of the pie pan.
Allow to fully cool then top with sweetened whipped cream.
Topping
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tbsp confectioners’ sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
Whisk the whipping cream (by hand, with a mixer, or employing the labor of children, partners, or random passers-by) until soft peaks form.
Sprinkle in the vanilla and sugar.
Continue whisking until stiff peaks form.
Spread into pretty whatevers, or just pile on top of the pie.