Easter at Home – Part 2
– by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
In
Western France, I learned that the French do not color eggs for Easter and that
bells bring chocolate eggs for children not the Easter bunny. Little Florence did hunt for eggs in her
grandparents’ garden to fill her Easter basket.
Even
the French eat some of their Easter chocolate before Easter lunch, but they do
save room for a great afternoon meal.
First,
you drink flutes of champagne in the living room before going to the dining
room.
Then,
you go to the dining room for a starter of white asparagus with homemade
mayonnaise followed by seafood. My
mother in-law served broiled scallops on their shells with butter and Parmesan
cheese. (I made this dish with cream and
grated gruyère cheese when I lived in Germany for holidays.)
The
main dish would always be a five-pound leg of lamb with green lentils from Puy.
After
the roast leg of lamb seasoned with garlic and rosemary would come a cheese
platter including camembert, brie de Meaux, and gouda. The cheese course is a pretext for opening
another bottle of wine usually.
Chocolate
mousse would be the dessert.
I
never got tired of that meal, but when we came back to the United States in the
mid 1990s, I was in charge of the meal in Wisconsin, which lacked many of the
foods I ate in France at the time.
So,
I made an American meal with Italian and French additions to it. That is very American in our multicultural
society.
I
began preparing my celebration of Easter in Madison with a purchase of egg dying
kits for little Florence. I put down
newspapers in the kitchen, and let her dunk away in purple and green dye with
her hands. I even let her color her
toes.
Laurent
brought home Cornish game hens for Easter lunch. I looked up how to cook those in Joy of Cooking – you need to bard them
in bacon with onions and herbes de Provence inside to keep the meat moist. A light Beaujolais would go well with this
dish I thought.
I
made Mexican seviche as our starter. I
marinated small pieces of orange roughy fish in lemon juice overnight to “cook”
it. To the fish, I added tomatoes,
onions, mildly hot yellow peppers, olive oil, vinegar, parsley, oregano, and
black olives. This brightly colored dish
was a feast for the eyes and tasted good, too.
I
used Marcella Hazan’s The Classic
Italian Cookbook for a tasty side dish of mashed potatoes: add grated
Parmesan cheese and butter to the mashed potatoes and top with chopped, flat
leaf Italian parsley.
For
our cheese course I served muenster, gruyère, and brie cheese.
Finally,
we did have an Easter lamb on the table.
I asked our local bakery to make a chocolate lamb cake with butter cream
frosting for us.
My
mother and I cleared the dishes while Laurent and Florence napped.
I
smiled and thought of the quote from the German writer Goethe that was in my
edition of Joy of Cooking:
That
which the fathers
Have
bequeathed thee,
Earn
it anew,
If
thou wouldst possess it.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
