Easter Feast
April 18th, 2006 Caroline
I know, I know, Easter was two days ago, but I’m still thinking about it. When I was a kid, Easter dinner was typically roast lamb and, more memorably for me, some decadent chocolate dessert. We always gave up chocolate for Lent, and midway through the season my mom, sister and I would start talking about what dessert could possibly make up for our 40-day deprivation. We made pot de creme, mousse, devil’s float, souffle, tart, torte, and any number of other chocolate treats. I wish now that we’d made a list of them all.
I don’t give up chocolate anymore, and I don’t eat meat, so Easter dinner has changed. I haven’t come up with a consistent menu, though over the years I’ve enjoyed some memorable meals. One year in college, I spent Easter with a friend whose Italian-American mom made the most decadent fettuccine alfredo I’ve ever tasted. I think I was a little appalled, at the time, about pasta for such an important meal, but I was smart enough not to say so. I kept quiet and slurped it up.
Several years ago, I wanted to make a great Easter dinner for Tony’s mom, Nancy, who was renowned for her cooking. She was hospitalized at the time, so I had to make something that would travel well and taste good at room temperature — basically, a really fancy picnic. I poached salmon, roasted asparagus, and served lemon squares with fresh raspberries and cream. Nancy was delighted, and I was inordinately proud.
Last year, Libby and I spent Easter together for the first time in years. She was in the habit of making trifle for dessert, which sounded great to me, but we were stumped for an entree; it had to satisfy several vegetarians and be easy to make in advance. We wound up making a couple strata, only realizing midway through the cooking that we were presenting such a high-carb, all-custard meal. Oh, well. No one complained.
This year, Tony and I brought the boys to my parents’ home for Easter, and one of my brothers came up, too. My mom and I, as is our habit, started emailing about the Easter feast a couple of weeks in advance, but hadn’t settled on anything before our arrival. She’d bought a big bag of sweet potatoes, but although we could think of at least one nice thing to do with them, it didn’t seem very Easter-y. There was this strata recipe that looked good, but we were planning an evening meal, and it seemed too brunch-y (we did, in fact, make it for brunch, with smoked gouda in place of the prosciutto; yum). Finally, we settled on this risotto, sort of; I added white wine, celery, and thyme, omitted the prosciutto and the goat cheese (just because we forgot to buy any), and used my dad’s homegrown peas.
But the best and most memorable part of the meal for me was definitely the lemon meringue cake from Feast. Nigella rocks again! I must admit that whenever she writes, as she does about the cake batter in this recipe, “don’t worry,†I do, because the last time I trusted that direction from her, I wound up with plastic wrap baked into my chocolate cake. But all the elements turned out fine. I’d cut down the sugar a bit next time, maybe even make my own lemon curd, but otherwise this was pure lemony heaven. I didn’t get to the camera in time, so I’ll make it again soon and post some pictures.
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