easter : an excuse for mimosas

forgive me if you are reading this and you actually celebrate easter (as opposed to consuming large amounts of chocolate). neither jessica nor i are religious, but the allure of the mimosa resulted in an easter celebration.

i'd never had a mimosa before, but it's apparently jessica's favorite champagne drink. lo and behold, easter loomed before us, and gave us the perfect excuse to have mimosas. we thus structured an easter brunch around mimosas. theme : elegant. we invited eva and oded, and vicky and peter.

on the menu:
citrus fruit salad
asparagus with hollandaise sauce
herbed crepes with "spring tomato sauce" (epicurious' name, not mine)
curried egg salad sandwiches
easter eggs!
hamantaschen
apricot souffles with creme anglaise

as usual, we made far too much food. on the bright side, that meant leftover egg salad sandwiches. we had our brunch in the maisonnette with eva, oded, vicky, and betsy (peter was in san diego), who regaled us with stories about her spring break, spent in new mexico teaching little kids.

that's enough details. on to the food... i believe all of our recipes came from epicurious (except for the hollandaise, which was from julia - masterting the art of french cooking). jessica blanched the asparagus and made the hollandaise sauce (so i still have never made hollandaise, only enjoyed eating it. i promise to stop using so many parenthetical phrases soon), while i made the egg salad and the crepes.

crepes! i had never actually made crepes, only watched other people doing it. i can now confidently say that i can make crepes. it took a couple tries at the beginning, but somehow the heat finally got to the right temperature and my crepes were coming off slightly golden and slightly crispy. basically, the recipe was an "herbed" crepe (i bet you thought this would be more exotic, but it just means crepe batter with chopped herbs in it - i used chives, parsley, and tarragon, all fresh, of course) filled with a mixture of ricotta, sauteed, diced bell peppers, and parmesan. changes i made in the recipe included using red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead of the recipe's green - which also makes them slightly sweeter, and i think better. i also used pecorino romano instead of parmesan, both because it was cheaper and, as i found out later, i like pecorino romano better. anyway, you fill the crepes, lay them in a baking dish, sprinkle them with cheese, and stick them in the oven for a bit - 20 minutes in the recipe, but 10 minutes in reality. i'm not too sure what this does, but ok. maybe the flavors meld? the cheese in the filling has already melted from the heat of the bell peppers... anyway, then there's this "spring tomato sauce" that goes with the crepes - and i recommend definitely serving at least a tomato sauce with the crepes, because it's a surprisingly fantastic combination. the recipe uses some dried herbs, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and then some fresh tomatoes. it tasted only slightly canned to me, but i think i would make the sauce entirely from fresh everything next time - that teaches me to use canned tomatoes.

the curried egg salad sandwiches were also a hit. the mixture is basically eggs, chopped parsley and chives, currants, mayo, and curry powder. it's a great combination - and the currants, provided that they're soft and not hard, are a fabulous addition, and better than craisins, which are too big and a bit too tart. the recipe uses "country bread" but i used my favorite tea-sandwich bread - that arnold's brick oven white bread, which i'm sure has no nutritional value, but is just the right thickness and has square slices.

i love hollandaise. there's just nothing else to say about it. while you lot are thinking, "but what about the calories!" i'm thinking "lemony, buttery goodness..."

i also love hamantaschen - thank you, eva! there are three good triangular foods i know of: hamantaschen, boreg, and tea sandwiches that do not involve copious amounts of cream cheese. (sorry, i don't like baklava.) by the way, if you were wondering, the word "easter" deviates from the latin, hebrew and french (the french is "paques" - and this is the word for both easter and passover) because easter comes from "austron," the northumbrian name for the goddess of fertility and sunrise. yay pagan roots. if austron is the goddess of sunrise, will she bless my architecture project with more light?

and the souffles. they were tart and sweet all at the same time, an exclamation point of a souffle if there ever was one. the combination of the souffle and the creme anglaise was absolutely perfect, with the tartness cut by the cool creamy vanilla. at that point, sadly, i couldn't finish my souffle because i had had one hamantaschen and one egg salad triangle too many.

finally: the mimosas were fabulous. i hope the rest of you ate some chocolate bunnies.