Easter 2026

Rob and Dyce were kind enough to invite us for Easter dinner at their house on a gorgeous day, clear enough to see all the way to Mt. Adams in Washington. Some food was eaten. Some rosé was drunk. Some tales were told.

How Appropriate for Easter
Dyce's Deviled Eggs

Starter Cocktail, Hugo Spritz
Prosecco, St-Germain, Mint, and Soda Water

Hard to Beat Patty Green Tempranillo Rosé

Rob's Ham

Barbara's Asparagus
with a Sort of Pistachio Pesto

Potato Gratin

Carot Salad: Salade de Carottes Râpées
Found Everywhere in France

I Made Biscuits for the Ham

Ann Made Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Stunning Sunset: Three-Fingered Jack, Black Butte, Mt. Jefferson

Easter 2025

Rob and Dyce invited us over for Easter dinner starring a huge Berkshire pork ham from Snake River Farms. They went all out with cocktails, deviled eggs, the ham, a potato-chile gratin, chilled asparagus, and an arugula salad with blood oranges, almonds, and blue cheese. I kicked in a batch of buttermilk biscuits at Dyce's request.

Dyce Cocktailing It

Prosecco, St. Germain, Sparkling Water, Lime, and Mint

Gorgeous Dill Pickle Deviled Eggs

Queen Lola

Arugula, Blood Oranges, Almonds, and Blue Cheese

The Guest of Honor

Potato and Chile Gratin

Biscuits, Because Ham Does Not Want to Dance Solo

Chilly, Just Before Sunset

Another Easter is in the books, a great day with great friends. We had a wonderful time on a beautiful day, talked and laughed a lot, drank some rosé, played with the dogs, and ate far too much food. Thanks so much to Rob and Dyce who went overboard in cooking way too much delicious food and being such gracious hosts.

Easter 2023

Ever since Ann's father passed away in 2016, we really haven't celebrated Easter all that much. With no family to cook for, it has seemed kind of pointless. This year, Rob and Dyce invited us over for Easter ham dinner which was much appreciated. It is very hard to find anyone who is willing to cook for me. People are intimidated by feeding a chef, but paradoxically, as a bunch we are just pretty happy to have anyone cook anything for us at any time.

Easter Sunday late afternoon we drove across the river to Rob and Dyce's house on a beautifully sunny day. We were greeted with delicious cocktails whose name I can no longer remember, if ever I knew. As I recall, they consisted of St. Germain, lime, mint, and sparkling wine. They were refreshingly delicious and worked well with Dyce's deviled eggs made with pickled jalapeños.

Deviled Eggs with Jalapeño

Going over to their house is always a treat for us in that we are guaranteed to get our dog fix in visiting with Lola and Reilly. We really miss our dogs and these two help with that. Lola's a crazy bundle of non-stop energy, while the smaller Reilly is much more sedate, but rules the roost.

Busted!

Reilly is Never Far From Rob

Rob smoked a Kurobuta (Berkshire) ham from Snake River Farms, a regional (next door in Idaho) purveyor of fine beef and pork. You'll see a lot of their products in high-end restaurants in this area.

Rob's Ham Fresh from the Smoker

Dyce made a salad to accompany the ham that was equally tasty and unusual. Don't quote me on this as I was too busy eating to dissect it, but I believe the salad was primarily shaved raw brussels sprouts, roasted artichoke hearts, cannellini, Italian parsley, and grated cheese (pecorino or Parmigiano) in a shallot vinaigrette.

Dyce's Salad of Brussels Sprouts, Cannellini, and Artichoke Hearts

Rob had asked me some weeks ago to make pommes Anna to accompany the ham. When he asked, neither he nor I knew that the vast majority of times that I have made pommes Anna at home, it has been for an Easter celebration. I determined this by looking at all the pommes Anna posts I have made over the years. Some coincidence!

I tried something new for this pommes Anna that I cannot recommend. Because we were having the potato dish at Rob and Dyce's house, I wanted to do the majority of cooking at our house and then finish it at theirs so that it would be hot for dinner. Pommes Anna cooks in two steps: first, covered to essentially steam the potatoes done and then uncovered, to dry them out a bit and finish the dish.

I decided to do the covered cooking at home and transport the potatoes to their house still covered and finish the uncovered cooking part in their oven. While in theory this was a good idea, in reality, during transport, the potatoes glued themselves to the bottom of my cast iron pan and would not release. I put the finished cake back together as well as I could, but it was a disappointing outcome. Now I know.

Pommes Anna with Yellow Potatoes

With the ham and potatoes, Rob opened a stunning dry Riesling from the Nahe, the 2020 Schäfer-Fröhlich Bockenauer Felseneck Riesling Grosses Gewächs. This was a first-class wine and a natural pairing with ham. Ham is a tricky dish to pair with wine because it is often very salty, smoky, or sweet, or really any combination of those three.

While Riesling is a great choice, we don't have any in the cooler from last summer, so what to bring? My pairing rule of thumb has always been, when in doubt: Pinot Noir. Because of the inherent sweetness of ham, I prefer a younger wine that still has a lot of its fruit, so I opted to bring a 2021 Patty Green Pinot Noir Estate Old Vine Ribbon Ridge, which is one of the best of the splendid 2021 Willamette Valley wines that we have tasted.

And finally, a few more photos.

As always, Ann and I so enjoyed our time with Dyce, Rob, and the girls. If we do it again, I won't be splitting the cooking of the pommes Anna between houses!

Shrimp Pasta Jambalaya

So I made something at home for the first time (made it plenty of times at the restaurant) that Ann asked me to make again: a pasta jambalaya, a riff on a traditional dish from South Louisiana.

Jambalaya, a rice dish with similarities to jollof rice from Africa and paella from Spain, is near and dear to my heart. I've made countless jambalayas of many stripes over the past five decades and am so comfortable making it that I have felt free for many, many years to adopt the idea and the technique as I have seen fit. In particular, in the past 20 years or so, I have adapted the technique used traditionally for rice to a newer version using Israeli couscous, a dish I call pasta jambalaya.

Shrimp Pasta Jambalaya with Israeli Couscous

Traditional jambalaya has evolved into two different but equal schools as have many Louisiana dishes: Creole and Cajun. The Creole version, essentially city cooking for the relatively richer people living in and around New Orleans, is tomato-based. The Cajun version, country cooking for the relatively poorer people from the bayous, tends to be roux-based. One is red, the other brown.

My heart lies in the simpler country cooking of the bayous and so my jambalaya almost never contains tomatoes, though in my early days learning the idioms of the Louisiana canon, I certainly made my share of all the classic Creole dishes. In extending my Cajun jambalaya to pasta, I make it with and without roux. Roux is essentially a thickener which is not necessary when cooking pasta in this fashion. The pasta will thicken the jambalaya without any assistance. Where roux makes a difference, however, is that inimitable flavor of flour highly browned in duck fat or lard. I did not use roux for this particular jambalaya because I was in a hurry and roux cannot be hurried.

The following photos illustrate the technique for making pasta jambalaya. It is not by accident that this is identical to making risotto. I make the two dishes in the same manner on the stovetop, just like paella. If I were making it in the traditional manner with rice, once I put the rice in the liquid, I would put the whole thing in the oven to finish à la arroz con pollo.

In the pan below, I have my trinity (onions, peppers, and celery) along with a little ham and garlic. My trinity is yellow onion, celery, poblano pepper, and in this case because I had a bunch of bottoms of green onions in the refrigerator needing to be eaten, sliced green onions. I use poblano peppers exclusively rather than Bell peppers that are used traditionally, merely because I don't really care for the flavor of Bell peppers. I contend that if the early Louisiana settlers had poblanos as an option, the cuisine would be based on them rather than Bell peppers.

I used a little cured ham in this, your basic supermarket ham steak. I would have preferred either tasso (spiced and smoked pork shoulder) or andouille (spiced pork shoulder cubes in a casing, smoked), easily available to the restaurant trade, but hard to find outside Louisiana in small quantities for home use. The smoked paprika in my house-made spice mix aka Magic Dust helps add some of the missing smoke flavor.

Trinity, Garlic, and Ham

Cook Until Onions are Translucent

A key part of any Cajun dish is the spice mix. Although pre-prepared spice mixes are now ubiquitous thanks to Chef Paul Prudhomme, I don't use any commercial mix, preferring the base recipe that I developed over many years at the restaurant. In addition to a lot of spice mix in the pan below, I also added a good sprinkle of filé powder (ground sassafras leaves). Although filé in jambalaya is probably heretical, I like the flavor.

Add Spice Mix and Cook for Another Minute

Add the Israeli Couscous (or Rice) and Stir Well

You can use whatever liquid you like in making this dish. If I had some shrimp stock, I would have used that. Chicken or vegetable stock would work great as well. I had neither, so I used water.

Add Liquid to Cover, Reduce Flame, Stir to Keep from Sticking

Add Liquid by Dribbles Until the Dish is Thick and Cooked

Once the pasta was nearly cooked and the liquid nearly evaporated (about three minutes before I thought the dish was done), I added a pound of medium peeled and deveined shrimp and stirred them until they just turned pink. As you can see in the very first photo, I think a sprinkle of grated pecorino works well on this dish, the old saw about "no cheese with seafood" be damned.