Or I guess more appropriately, Happy belated Easter.
Unfortunately, both Purdue and Butler lost this weekend and our brackets were sufficiently busted thanks to some upsets over Duke and Georgetown, so there was a bit of grieving this weekend. We also had a bad experience with sugar-free Peeps, which have the texture of marshmallow but the flavor of a cotton ball. In retrospect, I’m not quite sure why we thought a sugar-free marshmallow would be a good idea. I guess sometimes you just want to believe.
But let’s move onto the highlight of Easter, the food! Also the whole Jesus rising from the dead thing, but let’s assume that we represented that with symbolism through the food. I don’t know how that works so use your imagination. Sometimes you just want to believe. It was an Easter meal full of new cooking adventures and every recipe we tried was new for us. I’m proud to say that 4 out of 4 people voted it a success!
We began our Easter feast with prosciutto wrapped roasted asparagus paired with Unibroue’s Don de Dieu courtesy of Chris and Claire. These made for an excellent appetizer and the pairing worked really well. The spiced notes really brought out the nuttiness of the asparagus while the combination of the cured prosciutto and the asparagus exaggerated the orange zest character of the wheat characteristics of this beer. Spell check has assured me that, yes, nuttiness is a word. Also Wikipedia has informed me that Don de Dieu means “Gift of God” so from this point forward, this beer represents Easter. Symbolism doesn’t get more blunt than that.
From there, I finished up fooling around in the kitchen while Jess entertained our guests. Eventually dinner was served. The main course consisted of a roasted leg of lamb with a red wine sauce (a la Goose), scalloped onions with gruyere and drowned broccoli. All of this was paired with Three Floyd’s Robert the Bruce, a Scottish ale out of Munster, IN. The heavy roasted caramel malt flavors in this beer worked very well with the lamb and even seemed to meld well with the creamy sweetness of the scalloped onions. I’m not so sure it paired with the broccoli, but I don’t think any beverage pairs with broccoli. Jess later commented that the toasted bread that the broccoli was served on did an excellent job of absorbing the red wine sauce from the lamb. Everyone commented on how good the meal was and my desire to make people happy was satiated.
This is actually a picture of leftovers. I forgot to take any on Easter.
Instead of dessert, we wrapped up our meal by sharing a New Glarus Bourbon-Barrel Bock for dessert. I guess that isn’t really a dessert but I think we were all fairly stuffed by that point. After Chris and Claire retired for the evening to bottle their freshly fermented IPA, we treated Caroline to some lamb jerky. She literally inhaled all of it. I don’t think there was any chewing involved, which is probably a bad thing. With how much she loves food, you’d think we never feed her!
In the end, despite some disappointing NCAA performances, our Easter was very enjoyable. Thanks to Chris and Claire for sharing it with us! How did everyone else’s Easter go? Or if you don’t celebrate Easter, how did your weekend of March 22-23 go? Or if you don’t celebrate weekends, what is your favorite color? If you don’t have a favorite color, you really should be more decisive.