Easter Dinner

Cooking holiday dinners for two can be a bit challenging. To me, Easter calls for leg of lamb, roasted with rosemary and garlic. But, if I did a whole leg, we'd be eating lamb leg for weeks. Fortunately, I was able to find a partial roast from our Farmer's Market lamb vendor. Now, sadly, that meant it was boneless, but it was still a beautiful thing. First, I browned it up with just salt and pepper, then coated it with a paste of garlic, lemon juice, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I roasted it with Yukon Gold potatoes. The meal was really made, though, by the asparagus--which I assembled into bundles with cream cheese and wrapped in prosciutto. Coated in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and into the oven. Yum! Julie brought home some bread, and we had a "butter lamb" from Jaworski's, so that rounded out dinner. All, in all, very tasty.

Of course, a good dinner needs a good wine, and we had a 2003 Domaine de la Tourade Vacqueyras, Cuvee de L'Euse. That's a wonderful, racy red wine from the southern Rhone. This thing is a real monster, in a good way. It's rather rustic, tons of fruit and herbal garrigue notes, good minerality, earthy, brambly, in all, a big wine. And, as it's now 5 years old, it's mellowed a bit. I absolutely LOVE this wine. I'm also glad to have 3-4 more bottles in the cellar--it should continue to improve with age. It makes such a great pairing with the grassy, gamy lamb, plus the Provencal flavors of rosemary and garlic and lemon. These wines are sometimes viewed as a bit lower in quality than their much more refined cousins in Bordeaux, but dollar for dollar, these wines have so much more going on at a given price point, and are just such wonderful things. I like to think they reflect the more exuberant qualities of life in the south of France, but in reality, it's simply a reflection of the grapes, terroir, plus winemaking.