Celebrating Easter and Passover during Covid-19
Celebrating Passover and Easter this season under pandemic house-arrest turned out to be a balancing act of creativity, technology and endurance. Since multi-generations of family members gathered around the same table was not a possibility, people found unique ways to acknowledge one of the holiest and happiest moments in Western religion. Others, albeit less religious, also felt the need to partake in the annual ritual of welcoming spring.
All of these celebrations demand carefully thought out meals. For many of us in the wine industry, it also means looking for special bottles to share with our loved ones. Here are reports from friends queried the day after Easter to see how they managed in these strange times.
TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE
Technology became an essential tool for connecting with family and friends given our new norm of social distancing and stay-in-place protocols. Zoom Passovers created a popular forum for people across the country to assemble on a computer screen to read, drink wine, sing and eat special foods as part of the Seder ceremony.
Jan Hazard, former food editor of Ladies Home Journal, used technology for another purpose. Her son and daughter and their children are divided between Seattle and New Orleans, both hot spots for the Coronavirus. As Jan described it from her home in Connecticut where she has taken refuge, “My Easter, like most was isolated! We did have a great Zoom family time with all the Hazards-Abrahams where I did a virtual Eater egg hunt with the grands. They were very cute. I hid the colored eggs around the house with props for them to ask me to go to. When I found them, I’d drop them into my Easter Basket.”
CALIBRATING CULINARY EXPECTATIONS
Jacqui Pickles, caterer-to-the-stars in London, described how she managed under British lockdown. “Easter seemed very strange this year. Both Guy (her husband) and I being from large families, it was odd to celebrate just with our son, Matthew, instead of the usual full table of either Pickles family or Mauduits. Lamb is the usual meat for Easter lunch, but I didn’t get to the butcher in time to find myself a small shoulder which I would have slow roasted with garlic and herbs. Instead, I bought a chicken……. With this in mind, I ‘took off the crown’ (seemed extravagant for three to roast the whole chicken but I could make another meal with the legs) and roasted it on a bed of root vegetables which, puréed, became the gravy. We had delicious potatoes roasted in goose fat, new season’s asparagus and tender stem broccoli – and bread sauce.”
Being unfamiliar with bread sauce, Jacqui explained that it was an old English dish traditionally served with turkey or roast chicken. Like many people who had to be resourceful in making their Easter meal this year, Jacqui resorted to electronically knocking on a few doors to find some missing ingredients. “So, early yesterday morning I set about infusing the milk with an onion studded with cloves and bay leaves. I went to the spice box – no cloves! No cloves?! How does anyone ever use up all the cloves – surely a pack of cloves lasts a lifetime! I messaged the neighbours in a vain attempt to track some down (you cannot make bread sauce without cloves although I was standing there contemplating mixed spice powder). Neither of them is a great cook – but they might have had some(cloves) for toothaches, I thought! Knock me down with a feather, the least culinary-minded neighbour texted back with ‘they are on your doorstep!’ It was a great bread sauce made with some sourdough crumbs and finished with a little cream.”
For Easter dessert, Jacqui’s “pudding” was “Maman Blanc’s Chocolate Mousse,” a chocolate mousse recipe using egg whites from one of the UK’s most celebrated chefs, Raymond Blanc.
KEEPING YOUR STANDARDS HIGH
Jacqui always carefully studies what’s available to her before creating her final menu. In thinking about the perfect wine for her Easter lunch, she recalled an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, Durnsteiner Frauengarten, by Pichler-Krutzler which she had purchased several years earlier for a client’s dinner and enjoyed tremendously. Finding it again was no easy task, however. “I did come across a very small wine merchant in Kent who had three bottles on his website. I put them in the basket and then changed my mind as I noticed that it was 2009. I thought it might be a bit old as the wine we used to drink was pale in colour, fruity and vibrant on the palate. The next morning, Thursday – I had an email back saying, you didn’t complete your purchase. So, I replied saying I had misgivings about the wine’s age. The owner emailed me back and said, ’Why don’t I send you a bottle for free and if you like it, you might buy the other two?!’ So, it arrived the next day and that is what we drank with the chicken. As suspected, as elegant and well-made as it was, it lacked that vibrancy that I had remembered and loved so much.”
BUTT VERSUS SHANK
Hunkered down in the Hamptons, Beverly Stephen, Executive Editor of the now defunct but much beloved Food Arts magazine, was fêted by her partner and serious cook, James Jondreau. James loves to bake a ham at Easter. As Beverly recounted, “He likes the Smithfield butt portion better than the shank. It's studded with cloves and brushed with a brown sugar glaze. He also made potatoes au gratin with Gruyère and steamed some green beans and carrots.”
Their wine choice was a Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc, a Cheverny from Domaine du Salvard imported by Kermit Lynch. “This is a neighbor (appellation) to Sancerre, very good and much more budget-friendly.” For dessert, they selected a recipe for salted caramel ice cream from one of the country’s top artisanal ice cream shops, Bi-rite Creamery located in San Francisco. Beverly added that as hardcore fans, she and James always go there for an ice cream fix whenever they’re on the West Coast.
TAKING A TWISTED PATH
Former New York wine writer/publicist, Lila Gault, set about making a traditional Easter dinner with her husband, retired senior producer at ABC News, Bill Arp. But their path was a circuitous one, not that unusual given these days of unpredictability.
“As for our menu, we thought Easter Carbonara would be a special treat, giving a pork shout out to the pancetta, cured by a local butcher. But then we heard that our neighborhood seafood pop-up shop will reopen on Tuesday, so we thought it prudent to take the last of our previous order out of the freezer and changed the Easter entrée to sautéed halibut in butter and caper sauce. But wait, there’s more. On our late afternoon walk to the river, we passed a favorite restaurant - Calle Dao, a tasty mashup of Chinese Cuban food. A sign in the window said they were open for takeout/delivery only. When we walked in and learned that this was their last day until the crisis is over, we thought we should place an order to support them. So, our thrice-designed Easter feast was Cuban Fried Rice and Havana Spring Rolls.”
Hardly your classic Easter meal, but at least their wine choice was a tad less capricious: a Minuty Rosé from Provence. As Lila described their Easter celebration, “A trifecta from China, Cuba and France - delicious. We’ll be eating the halibut tonight.”
SURPRISES EVEN WITH THE BEST LAID PLANS
Hotel industry executives, American Sharon Telesca and her Swiss husband, Gérard Feurer, were my only friends who successfully pulled off a spring lamb dinner at their beach home on the New Jersey Shore. But advance planning was critical. They called in their list to one of the only two stores in their area ten days in advance. Three days before Easter the store called telling them they could pick their order at curbside. Sunday afternoon Gérard broke out his grill for the first time in the season. Their meal consisted of rack of lamb, puréed white beans with thyme, roasted sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with thyme and shallots. Given the shortages in these Covid-19 times, Sharon laughed when she saw the paltry four Brussels sprouts her store sent. “Luckily, they were large ones which, when cut up into quarters was sufficient for a tiny serving for each of us.”
As both Gen-Xers love wine, they pulled out the stops with a 2002 Marcassin (a Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir) from their cellar. As Sharon tells it, “While it would have been better several years ago, it drank well. Happy accident of ‘finding it’ even though Gérard maintains an inventory of our cellar. Less than 200 bottles but it still got lost.”
A WALK ON THE LIGHT SIDE
From Baltimore, the wine writing duo extraordinare, Marguerite Thomas and Paul Lucas, chose to eat light this year enjoying a spinach risotto. ” I have to say it was delicious—loaded with shallots and garlic and not overwhelmed by spinach but just enough of it for color and delicate flavor. Lots of Parm, of course, and generously drizzled with olive oil.” For dessert, they enjoyed half of a frostless chocolate cake made by a friend using Hershey's cocoa,“ which Marguerite described as “a perfect base for some chocolate-almond vanilla ice cream.” And, their wine choice to accompany the spinach risotto? “A Decoy, Sonoma County (California) Cabernet Sauvignon 2017, a lovely partner for the dish. And afterwards,” Marguerite confessed, “I had a nightcap of Bulleit rye whiskey spiked with fresh lime and amaro.”
A SERIOUS EASTER FEAST
Master of Wine, Mary Gorman, celebrated a quiet Easter with her husband, Joe, and their teenage son, Luca, in their Harlem apartment. Mary and Joe are from Ireland where lamb is the classic choice at Easter. But planning a traditional meal has its challenges mid-Pandemic. “Way too late last week I thought ‘Oh I better get a leg of lamb.’ So, on Friday when I called our local butcher- Harlem Shambles - the inevitable answer was that every bit of lamb had been sold. So, I high tailed it down asap to the shop, and thankfully there was not a long line. Beef shanks caught my eye and I pictured a nice Osso Buco in our future. I stocked up and came home to Joe and Luca with a plan - at least for the main course.”
The following morning Mary continued her shopping dashing out to their local farmer’s market at Morningside Park and 110th Street, heading straight to the fishmonger. “The quality of the fish is fabulous at the moment as there are less recreational boat out on the waters. So I stocked up on scallops for Easter Sunday and a whole red snapper and large shrimp for Saturday night.”
Mary’s banker husband, Joe—a passionate home cook—took out his new slow cooker for its maiden culinary voyage. As Mary recounted “Joe found an eight-hour prep/marinating time recipe for Osso Buco (Melissa Clark NYT) while I made the gremolata and creamy mashed potatoes.” Being the in-house wine expert, the choice of wine naturally fell to Mary while Joe did all the hard labor on the beef in addition to marinating the scallops in lime and some miso paste before grilling them for their first course.
To start their Easter feast, Mary and Joe had a Zoom apéro with friends. “We opened a little Bordeaux Blanc - Château du Champs des Treilles, 2018 - a lovely biodynamic property way east in Sainte Foy, Bordeaux. Fabulously refreshing and mineral driven, focused and vibrant.” For their dinner, Mary selected a delicious red Bordeaux, a Château du Gaby, 2005, Canon Fronsac. “I opened it five hours earlier and decanted it, so that it was perfect when we sat down. A big wine when it was young, it had evolved and integrated beautifully - still showing a lot of deep, dark, ripe plummy fruit, but overlaid with notes of coffee, dried leaves, earth and leather. Thankfully, we have half of it left to enjoy the following evening!!!”
According to Mary, the family was too full to eat the Easter cakes she had purchased at Silver Moon bakery, one of New York City’s hot spots for breads and other baked goods. These, too, were set aside for the next day.
SIMPLICITY AT ITS BEST
Not everyone goes to the same effort in preparing their holiday celebration as Joe and Mary did. Some people—especially winemakers—prefer a simple meal especially when they want their wine to be the focus. Patricia Gelles, original owner of Klipsun Vineyard—one of Washington State’s most prestigious sites in The Red Mountain Appellation—sheepishly disclosed that she and her family don’t celebrate Passover. But, they always enjoy a good dinner. With only one of their two children at home, Trish and David dined on cold chicken made earlier which Trish served with roasted onions and rice.
“The wine, however, “ Trish explained with a serious tone in her voice, “was a lovely Leonetti Cellar 2000 Reserve, Walla Walla Valley. David has, finally, pulled out some 20-year-old wines, mostly Washington State. We have so much wine and we’re not drinking it fast enough!”
A VINTNER/GARDENER’S EASTER FEAST
Turning to Trish’s neighbor in Oregon, I asked Susan Sokol Blosser—and one of the state’s winemaking pioneers—how she and her vintner husband, Russ, celebrated Easter. “We have had beautiful weather for the last week and thus the splendor of spring cheers me. Our celebration yesterday took the form of a very long walk with the dogs in the vineyard, then a trip to the local nursery for some strawberry plants for our garden which we plan to expand this year.” Susan made French toast for breakfast. Then Russ grilled shrimp with garam masala /curry seasoning for dinner. “We had it with a large salad, a mélange of our garden lettuces, bolstered by mint, cilantro, fresh orange pieces, and cut up dates. We drank a Sokol Blosser Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir to celebrate. We shelled walnuts and had a few pieces of dark chocolate for dessert.”
NOTHING STOPS AN EASTER DEVOTEE
Like fellow widow, Jan Hazard, I celebrated Easter solo. But given this is one of my favorite holidays, I wasn’t about to surrender to pity. Instead, on Saturday I dyed eggs after trudging through three stores scavenging for a basic PAAS coloring kit. I was desperate. They used to be everywhere this time of year! Now, like flour, sugar, yeast and many spices, PAAS was M.I.A. When I asked a neatly dressed, middle-aged Hispanic man restocking the shelves for help, he turned to me and reassuringly said, “Madam, no worries. Come with me.” I obediently followed my Pied Piper through the store to the baking isle carefully observing social distancing. “Here you go!” he said as he lifted a tiny box of McCormick’s “Food Color & Egg Dye” off the top shelf. He gave me a warm smile and comforting wink as I protectively took the box to the check-out counter as if it were a prized possession.
Eggs colored, I turned my attention to baking a carrot cake in muffin tins. Let’s face it. The best part of this classic dessert is its cream cheese icing which I eagerly prepared while the cupcakes were in the oven, my teaspoon poised for sampling.
Easter morning, I walked three miles delivering packages—a colored egg, a cupcake, jellybeans and my favorite, a yellow marshmallow Peep—to friends on the upper East Side. Then, with my spirits lifted from watching Andrea Bocelli’s stirring Easter concert on YouTube, I set my attention to making dinner. Cooking for one can be sad at times so I decided to share my Easter meal with an elderly neighbor and retired doctor in my building. We dined in our separate homes on roasted pork loin (using a recipe from Bill Arp), sautéed fresh asparagus and sweet potato purée.
I selected a dusty bottle from my late husband’s wine cellar: a 1983 Riserva Ducale, a Chianti Classico, from Ruffino. As soon as I pulled out the cork, which came out far too easily, I knew I was in for a disappointment. Air had gotten into the bottle and the wine had turned. Despite the fact is was oxidized and a dull brown color, I drank a small glass anyway. It struck me as symbolic of Covid-19’s devastation of our lives. But, as Susan Sokol-Blosser proclaimed, it was also spring and time to allow oneself to be hopeful and to anticipate a brighter, happier, more normal future. And, if we continue doing what we’re supposed to do to stay safe, I’m relatively confident the PAAS will be back on the shelves next Easter.
Celebrating Passover and Easter this season under pandemic house-arrest turned out to be a balancing act of creativity, technology and endurance. Since multi-generations of family members gathered around the same table was not a possibility, people found unique ways to acknowledge one of the holiest and happiest moments in Western religion. Others, albeit less religious, also felt the need to partake in the annual ritual of welcoming spring.
All of these celebrations demand special meals. For many of us in the wine industry, it also means looking for special bottles to open and share with our loved ones. Here are reports from friends queried the day after Easter to see how they managed in these strange times.
TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE
Technology became an important tool for connecting with loved ones given our new norm of social distancing and stay-in-place. Zoom Passovers created a popular forum for people across the country to assemble on a computer screen to read, drink wine, sing and eat special foods as part of the Seder ceremony.
Jan Hazard, former food editor of Ladies Home Journal, used technology for another purpose. Her son and daughter and their children are divided between Seattle and New Orleans, both hot spots for the Coronavirus. As Jan described it from her home in Connecticut where she has taken refuge, “My Easter, like most was isolated! We did have a great Zoom family time with all the Hazards-Abrahams where I did a virtual Eater egg hunt with the grands. They were very cute. I hid the colored eggs around the house with props for them to ask me to go to. When I found them, I’d drop them into my Easter Basket.”
CALIBRATING CULINARY EXPECTATIONS
Jacqui Pickles, caterer-to-the-stars in London, described how she managed under British lockdown. “Easter seemed very strange this year. Both Guy (her husband) and I being from large families, it was odd to celebrate just with our son, Matthew, instead of the usual full table of either Pickles family or Mauduits. Lamb is the usual meat for Easter lunch, but I didn’t get to the butcher in time to find myself a small shoulder which I would have slow roasted with garlic and herbs. Instead, I bought a chicken……. With this in mind, I ‘took off the crown’ (seemed extravagant for three to roast the whole chicken but I could make another meal with the legs) and roasted it on a bed of root vegetables which, puréed, became the gravy. We had delicious potatoes roasted in goose fat, new season’s asparagus and tender stem broccoli – and bread sauce.”
Being unfamiliar with bread sauce, Jacqui explained that it was an old English dish traditionally served with turkey or roast chicken. Like many people who had to be resourceful in making their Easter meal this year, Jacqui resorted to electronically knocking on a few doors to find some missing ingredients. “So, early yesterday morning I set about infusing the milk with an onion studded with cloves and bay leaves. I went to the spice box – no cloves! No cloves?! How does anyone ever use up all the cloves – surely a pack of cloves lasts a lifetime! I messaged the neighbours in a vain attempt to track some down (you cannot make bread sauce without cloves although I was standing there contemplating mixed spice powder). Neither of them is a great cook – but they might have had some(cloves) for toothaches, I thought! Knock me down with a feather, the least culinary-minded neighbour texted back with ‘they are on your doorstep!’ It was a great bread sauce made with some sourdough crumbs and finished with a little cream.”
For Easter dessert, Jacqui’s “pudding” was chocolate mousse using egg whites, a recipe called “Maman Blanc’s Chocolate Mousse” from one of the UK’s most celebrated chefs, Raymond Blanc.
KEEPING YOUR STANDARDS HIGH
Jacqui always carefully studies what’s available to her before creating her final menu. In thinking about the perfect wine for her Easter lunch, she recalled an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, Durnsteiner Frauengarten, by Pichler-Krutzler which she had purchased several years earlier for a client’s dinner and enjoyed tremendously. Finding it again was no easy task, however. “I did come across a very small wine merchant in Kent who had three bottles on his website. I put them in the basket and then changed my mind as I noticed that it was 2009. I thought it might be a bit old as the wine we used to drink was pale in colour, fruity and vibrant on the palate. The next morning, Thursday – I had an email back saying, you didn’t complete your purchase. So, I replied saying I had misgivings about the wine’s age. The owner emailed me back and said, ’Why don’t I send you a bottle for free and if you like it, you might buy the other two?!’ So, it arrived the next day and that is what we drank with the chicken. As suspected, as elegant and well-made as it was, it lacked that vibrancy that I had remembered and loved so much.”
BUTT VERSUS SHANK
Hunkered down in the Hamptons, Beverly Stephens, Editor-in-Chief of the now defunct but much beloved Pastry Arts magazine, was fêted by her partner and serious cook, James Jondreau. James loves to bake a ham at Easter. As Beverly recounted, “He likes the Smithfield butt portion better than the shank. It's studded with cloves and brushed with a brown sugar glaze. He also made potatoes au gratin with Gruyère and steamed some green beans and carrots.”
Their wine choice was a Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc, a Cheverny from Domaine du Salvard imported by Kermit Lynch. “This is a neighbor (appellation) to Sancerre, very good and much more budget-friendly.” For dessert, they selected a recipe for salted caramel ice cream from one of the country’s top artisanal ice cream shops, Bi-rite Creamery located in San Francisco. Beverly added that as hardcore fans, she and James always go there for an ice cream fix whenever they’re on the West Coast.
TAKING A TWISTED PATH
Former New York wine writer, Lila Gault, set about making a traditional Easter dinner with her husband, retired senior producer at ABC News, Bill Arp. But their path was a circuitous one, not that unusual given these days of unpredictability.
“As for our menu, we thought Easter Carbonara would be a special treat, giving a pork shout out to the pancetta, cured by a local butcher. But then we heard that our neighborhood seafood pop-up shop will reopen on Tuesday, so we thought it prudent to take the last of our previous order out of the freezer and changed the Easter entrée to sautéed halibut in butter and caper sauce. But wait, there’s more. On our late afternoon walk to the river, we passed a favorite restaurant - Calle Dao, a tasty mashup of Chinese Cuban food. A sign in the window said they were open for takeout/delivery only. When we walked in and learned that this was their last day until the crisis is over, we thought we should place an order to support them. So, our thrice-designed Easter feast was Cuban Fried Rice and Havana Spring Rolls.”
Hardly your classic Easter meal, but at least their wine choice was a tad less capricious -- a Minuty Rosé from Provence. As Lila described their Easter celebration, “A trifecta from China, Cuba and France - delicious. We’ll be eating the halibut tonight.”
SURPRISES EVEN WITH THE BEST LAID PLANS
Hotel industry executives, American Sharon Telesca and her Swiss husband, Gérard Feurer, pulled off a spring lamb dinner at their beach home on the New Jersey Shore. But advance planning was critical. They called in their list to from one of the two stores in their area ten days in advance. Three days before Easter the store called telling them they could pick their order at curbside. Sunday afternoon Gérard broke out his grill for the first time in the season. Their meal consisted of rack of lamb, puréed white beans with thyme, roasted sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with thyme and shallots. Given the shortages in these Covid-19 times, Sharon laughed when she saw the paltry four Brussels sprouts her store sent. “Luckily, they were large ones which, when cut up into quarters was sufficient for a tiny serving for each of us.”
As both Gen-Xers love wine, they pulled out the stops with a 2002 Marcassin (a Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir) from their cellar. As Sharon tells it, “While it would have been better several years ago, it drank well. Happy accident of ‘finding it’ even though Gérard maintains an inventory of our cellar. Less than 200 bottles but it still got lost.”
A WALK ON THE LIGHT SIDE
From Baltimore, the wine writing duo extraordinare, Marguerite Thomas and Paul Lucas, chose to eat light this year enjoying a spinach risotto. ” I have to say it was delicious—loaded with shallots and garlic and not overwhelmed by spinach but just enough of it for color and delicate flavor. Lots of Parm, of course, and generously drizzled with olive oil.” For dessert, they enjoyed half of a frostless chocolate cake made by a friend with Hershey's cocoa,“ which Marguerite described as being “a perfect base for some chocolate-almond vanilla ice cream.” And, their wine choice to accompany the spinach risotto? “A Decoy, Sonoma County (California) Cabernet Sauvignon 2017, a lovely partner for the dish. And afterwards,” Marguerite confirmed, “I had a nightcap of Bulleit rye whiskey spiked with fresh lime and amaro.”
A SERIOUS EASTER FEAST
Master of Wine, Mary Gorman, celebrated a quiet Easter with her husband, Joe, and their teenage son, Luca, in their Harlem apartment. Mary and Joe are from Ireland where lamb is the classic choice at Easter. But planning a traditional meal has its challenges mid-Pandemic. “Way too late last week I thought ‘Oh I better get a leg of lamb.’ So, on Friday when I called our local butcher- Harlem Shambles - the inevitable answer was that every bit of lamb had been sold. So, I high tailed it down asap to the shop, and thankfully there was not a long line. Beef shanks caught my eye and I pictured a nice Osso Buco in our future. I stocked up and came home to Joe and Luca with a plan - at least for the main course.”
The following morning Mary continued her shopping dashing out to their local farmer’s market at Morningside Park and 110th Street, heading straight to the fishmonger. “The quality of the fish is fabulous at the moment as there are less recreational boat out on the waters. So I stocked up on scallops for Easter Sunday and a whole red snapper and large shrimp for Saturday night.”
Mary’s banker husband, Joe—a passionate home cook—took out his new slow cooker for its first culinary outing. As Mary recounted “Joe found an eight-hour prep/marinating time recipe for Osso Buco (Melissa Clark NYT) while I made the gremolata and creamy mashed potatoes.” Being the in-house wine expert, the choice of wine naturally fell to Mary while Joe did all the hard labor on the beef I addition to marinating the scallops in lime and some miso paste before grilling them for their first course.
To start their Easter feast, Mary and Joe had a Zoom apéro with friends. “We opened a little Bordeaux Blanc - Château du Champs des Treilles, 2018 - a lovely biodynamic property way east in Sainte Foy, Bordeaux. Fabulously refreshing and mineral driven, focused and vibrant.” For their dinner, Mary selected a delicious red Bordeaux, a Château du Gaby, 2005, Canon Fronsac. “I opened it five hours earlier and decanted it, so that it was perfect when we sat down. A big wine when it was young, it had evolved and integrated beautifully - still showing a lot of deep, dark, ripe plummy fruit, but overlaid with notes of coffee, dried leaves, earth and leather. Thankfully, we have half of it left to enjoy the following evening!!!”
According to Mary, the family was too full to eat the Easter cakes she had purchased for dessert at Silver Moon bakery, one of New York City’s hot spots for breads and other baked goods. These, too, were set aside for the next day.
SIMPLICITY AT ITS BEST
Not everyone goes to the same effort in preparing their holiday celebration as Joe and Mary did. Some people—especially winemakers—prefer a simple meal especially when they want their wine to be the focus. Patricia Gelles, original owner of Klipsun Vineyard—one of Washington State’s most prestigious sites in The Red Mountain Appellation—sheepishly disclosed that she and her family don’t celebrate Passover but that they always enjoy a good dinner together. With only one of their two children at home, Trish and David dined on a delicious cold chicken made earlier which Trish served with roasted onions and some rice.
“The wine, however, “ Trish explained with a serious toe in her voice, “was a lovely Leonetti Cellar 2000 Reserve, Walla Walla Valley. David has, finally, pulled out some 20-year-old wines, mostly Washington State. We have so much wine and we’re not drinking it fast enough!”
A GARDENER’S EASTER FEAST
Turning to Trish’s neighbor in Oregon, I asked Susan Sokol Blosser—and one of the state’s winemaking pioneers—how she and her vintner husband, Russ, celebrated Easter. “We have had beautiful weather for the last week and thus the splendor of spring cheers me. Our celebration yesterday took the form of a very long walk with the dogs in the vineyard, then a trip to the local nursery for some strawberry plants for our garden which we plan to expand this year.” Susan made French toast for breakfast. Then Russ grilled shrimp with garam masala /curry seasoning for dinner. “We had it with a large salad, a mélange of our garden lettuces, bolstered by mint, cilantro, fresh orange pieces, and cut up dates. We drank a Sokol Blosser Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir to celebrate. We shelled walnuts and had a few pieces of dark chocolate for dessert.”
NOTHING STOPS AN EASTER DEVOTEE
Like fellow widow, Jan Hazard, I celebrated Easter solo. But given this is one of my favorite holidays, I wasn’t about to surrender to pity. Instead, on Saturday I dyed eggs after trudging through three stores scavenging for a basic PAAS coloring kit. I was desperate. They used to be everywhere this time of year! Now, like flour, sugar, yeast and many spices, PAAS was M.I.A. When I asked a neatly dressed, middle-aged Hispanic man restocking the shelves for help, he turned to me and reassuringly said, “Madam, no worries. Come with me.” I obediently followed my Pied Piper through the store to the baking isle carefully observing social distancing. “Here you go!” he said as he lifted a tiny box of McCormick’s “Food Color & Egg Dye” off the top shelf. He gave me a warm smile and comforting wink as I protectively took the box to the check-out counter as if it were a prized possession.
Eggs colored, I turned my attention to baking a carrot cake in muffin tins. Let’s face it. The best part of this dessert is its classic cream cheese icing which I eagerly prepared while the cupcakes were in the oven with my teaspoon poised for sampling.
Easter morning, I walked three miles delivering packages—a colored egg, a cupcake, jellybeans and my favorite, a yellow marshmallow Peep—to friends on the upper East Side. Then, with my spirits lifted from watching Andrea Bocelli’s stirring Easter concert on YouTube, I set my attention to making dinner. Cooking for one can be sad at times so I decided to share my Easter meal with an elderly neighbor and retired doctor in my building. We dined in our separate homes on roasted pork loin (using a recipe from Bill Arp), sautéed fresh asparagus and sweet potato purée.
I selected a dusty bottle from my late husband’s wine cellar: a 1983 Riserva Ducale, a Chianti Classico, from Ruffino. As soon as I pulled out the cork, which came out far too easily, I knew I was in for a disappointment. Air had gotten into the bottle and the wine had turned. Despite the fact is was oxidized and a dull brown color, I drank a small glass anyway. It struck me as symbolic of the bitter times we are facing with the devastation of Covid-19. But, as Susan Sokol-Blosser proclaimed, it was also spring and time to allow oneself to be hopeful and to anticipate brighter, happier times. And, if we continue doing what we’re supposed to do to stay safe, I’m relatively confident the PAAS will be back on the shelves next Easter.