Recipe for Easter Dinner

No part of this post relates to soup. I suppose one part could because I did give an entire ham hock to KMS to make spilt pea soup, but there are no soup recipes here today. Instead, I present several components of a successful Easter Dinner. 
Let's start with the ham(s). I (somewhat foolishly) decided to make two 10-pound spiral hams because I was expecting nearly 20 people. Plans fell through for about 8 of them, so 12 of us were left to eat the hams.  Harley started waiting for these people hours before they were expected to show up, not that he can tell time.

Back to the hams, needless to say, there were leftovers. I placed the hams, cut side down, in my roaster pan and covered them in foil. Shockingly, they fit in the oven with one rack removed.  I cooked these babies for 2 1/2 hours at 275 then started to freak out that they wouldn't be done on time, so cooked them for another hour at 325.

Meanwhile, I prepared a wet glaze for one of them with apple juice, bourbon, molasses, brown sugar and mustard.

Measure 1/2 a cup of apple juice

Add 1/4 cup of bourbon.

Put both liquids in a small sauce pan over medium-high heat and boil until reduced to about a 1/3 of a cup. Fight the urge to make yourself a drink or just have some if you'd like. I found that this foamed a lot while boiling so you don't want to stray too far from the stove or else you'll have a boil over mess.

Meanwhile, mix together 1 3/4 cups of packed brown sugar,

A quarter cup molasses,

and a squirt of mustard.

Mix all this together. It will look like sludge.

By now the apple juice-bourbon mix should be reduced. Add it to the brown sugar-molasses sludge and mix well. Set aside until the ham is done.

Meanwhile, work on the other components of this perfect Easter dinner. I'll go next to mac and cheese. This Easter dinner was also slated to be a great mac and cheese cook off competition, complete with a score sheet

and awesome prizes, le crueset for the winner and Ed Hardy glasses for the loser.

However, we only ended up with two entrants (mine and Brian's) because plans fell through for our other friends who were competing. I think I won the contest, but only because Brian actually wanted to use the Ed Hardy glasses (which made me seriously think about my decision to marry him).

Anyway, onto my mac and cheese. I use 2% milk, butter, flour, randomly shaped pasta, a sharp white cheddar and a spicy jack cheese, some adobo sauce from chipotles and in adobo and bread crumbs.

Slice up the cheese into chunks. The smaller they are, the easier they will melt. You could shred/grate the cheese if you like.

Get some water boiling in a big pot.

Now, work on your cheese sauce. This sauce is the secret to delicious mac and cheese. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a medium sauce pot over medium heat.

Add 4 tablespoons of flour,

Whisk together to mix. Continue to stir until the flour is all cooked, about 5 minutes.

Add about 2 cups of milk, stir to mix, and heat for about 10 minutes.

Add the cheese and adobo sauce. Stir continuously to be sure the cheese melts, nothing sticks to the bottom and the milk doesn't boil over. The sauce will thicken as it cooks. If it seems too thin, just add more flour and stir well to incorporate.

Meanwhile, your water should be boiling by now, so add the pasta and cook until al dente. I used a whole box of rotelle.

Once the pasta is done, drain it and transfer to whatever casserole dish you want to bake the mac and cheese in. I chose a cast iron dutch oven because I wanted mine to stay warm. Anything 2 quarts or bigger should hold this mac and cheese. Add the cheese sauce and stir a little bit to be sure all the pasta is covered. This will look soupy and that's okay. It will bake up just fine. Top with bread crumbs to make a crunchy top. Bake for 45 minutes at 350.

The final product will look bubbly and delicious.

Meanwhile, Brian was busy frying up some of his mac and cheese, since he's of the opinion that frying things always makes them better. They were pretty good, but the non-fried version of his was better (you can sort of see his dish in the background of the picture above).

So what next? I think 13 bottles of wine makes for a nice Easter. Though I do believe we only drank 4 of them and there were no 'water into wine' jokes.

A vegetable would also be nice. Nothing says 'Spring is here' like asparagus! CDC sponsors Farmer's Markets in all of its campuses weekly and I bought all the asparagus at the market at my campus on Friday. Yes, that's 7 buddles of asparagus.

Since the oven was busy with hams and mac and cheeses, the asparagus went on the grill. Seasoned simply with salt, pepper and garlic powder.  This platter is huge, though I know it doesn't show that way in this picture. This was more asparagus than I've ever seen in one place at one time. Thankfully, I ♥ asparagus so leftovers will not go to waste.

Now, back to the hams. They finally cooked and cooled. I poured the wet glaze over one and baked for another 20 minutes at 425 until the glaze was nice and bubbly.

Brian meanwhile coated the other ham in brown sugar and made a brown sugar-butter glaze. He poured it over the ham and it solidified into delicious ham candy.

Then I put out plates, flatware and drinks and waited for our friends to arrive.

Friends came, complete with some tomato pie, cheesy grits, more beer and many lovely desserts, all of which I neglected to take pictures of (because I'm really self-centered). We had a great time, with everyone who wanted leftovers taking some home. Then baseball came on and I nearly vomited at Beckett's awful first outing. Boston won in the end, but I do not like to see the ace have 5 earned runs against him. Oh well, at least Easter dinner was great!