Our Passover dinner came and went. Well, I guess February 23 is almost two months before the Passover of 2008, and our dinner was really Greek, not Jewish, so it really wasn't Passover at all. About the only thing this dinner had in common with Passover was the leg of lamb that we feasted on.
The preparation for the meal began last night, when we unpacked the 8.5 pound lamb leg and trimmed a prepared it. Our recipe calls for a mix of basil and parsley, and slices of garlic inserted into the meat at 1/2-inch intervals. We wrap it up and let it absorb the aromas and flavors of the garlic and herbs and then bring it out to slowly roast the next day. We had the added treat this time of having to shave off a little wool from the meat; our family was not particularly excited to hear about that experience.
Sarah spent this morning preparing the couscous to go with dinner. Our couscous is laden with diced cucumber and more parsley. Sarah detests cucumber and so really just makes the couscous for me. The afternoon was spent mostly tidying up the house so it was presentable for company. By the time our family arrived, our nearly 1-year-old daughter had made much of our efforts naught, the tempest she is. We broke out the prepared lamb at 4:00 and began the process of slow-roasting it for dinner. Sarah then prepared the spinach salad as we waited for our guests to arrive.
By 5:45 all six guests had arrived, and our feast was greeted rather frigidly by some of the largest snow flakes I have seen in my life. We probably got about 2-inches of snow in a matter of 30-minutes, but at 32 degrees, the accumulation was minimal on solid surfaces, a little more pronounced on botanical ground. Dinner was served at 6:00, or rather I began carving the leg at that time. Most of our family liked the lamb, nobody besides me really liked the couscous. Strike that, actually Sydney really enjoyed the couscous; nobody could believe it. It seemed that all of our guests were immediately hungry for dessert -- In my book that's not a good thing.
Nevertheless, dessert was excellent. Debbie made a multi-layer cheesecake that can take up to three days to prepare, as it requires eight hours of cooling in between layers. With chocolate-covered strawberries and a strawberry-rhubarb compote topping, it was mouth-watering delicious. Paired nicely with some Archer Farms Reserve Roast coffee from good old Target, an excellent Mediterranean dinner (at least in my mind) was capped of with a superb dessert finalé.
The rest of the evening was spent being entertained by our daughter. David wanted me to hook up the old NES from 20-years ago so he could play Super Mario Bros. 3, but I just wasn't in the mood to dig through the boxes in our basement to find it. Sarah wanted to bring out the cards, but it seemed that everybody else was more interested in playing with the baby than in some spirited competition. The evening ended about 9:30, when everybody went out to warm up their cars and brush the fallen snow off of their windshields. The evening had flown by; a nice Shiraz would have made the evening perfect, but alas, that wasn't in the cards this night.
