Sunday 31 March
We couldn't let Easter pass
without a bit of celebration, so we asked Cathy and Eleni over to share the
holiday dinner. Accordingly Holt started
baking the day before, since he saw a recipe for one of the hundreds of absolutely traditional torte
di pasqua in La Cucina Italiana
online.
The torta was made extra-high and
filled with whole milk ricotta from Gibb's, their scamorza rather than mortadella,
and eggs broken into the filling so they would bake whole inside the torta.
Holt also made a batch of his
prize-winning pane pugliese to top
with drained yogurt and smoked salmon, while
we drank the effervescent Vinho Verde Cathy brought, and snacked on Dean's
Byzantine Antipasto olive mix and wasabi peas.
As soon as the bread came out of
the oven, we threw in our late friend Bob's "savory" roasting pan, in
which the 7-lb. Schad's half ham braised in a little wine on top of chunks of
turnip, carrot, and shallot. Julia in The Way to Cook actually writes that
half hams braise for longer than whole ones, but we suspect that this is one of
her rare typos, and 1 1/2 hours was plenty.
Then as soon as the ham came out,
a panful of oiled and salted asparagus went in to roast.
We laid out everything on the
table, populated for the occasion with bowling bunnies and (thanks to Eleni) a rich
Côtes du Rhône standing by for the ham, and as Nadia G. says, we schkoffed. For a couple of hours.
Of course, dessert is essential,
though it's usually just stale peeps and the tail of a chocolate bunny. Instead, Holt baked David Warda's pistachio
cake, whose cardamom flavor blended beautifully with Graeter's coconut chip ice
cream and a few chocolate-covered strawberries.
Couldn't be sweeter, though it added even more pounds we're just going
to have to work off in the coming weeks.
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