Good morning everyone.

Happy Sunday!

Before starting with today’s menu we should discuss an interesting element.

My timing.

I recently gave you a rock solid Saint Patrick’s day menu – a full fucking week AFTER Saint’s Patrick Day!

Outstanding!

Well, guess what? Easter was last week and I’m here to show you how to prepare a perfect Easter dinner for your friends and family TODAY!

I have some work to do with my timing.

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Why is an unrepentant heathen like me even cooking an Easter dinner?

I don’t fucking know!

Somehow my ever-increasing family decided we needed to do a big ass family get together and they decided “Hey, we can have yeah right cook for all of us! Fucking awesome!”

Shit.

Actually it was great. It gave me a chance to see my 2 daughters and the 3 granddaughters as well as nieces, their spouses, grand nieces and just a whole shit load of folks! Thirteen folks in all including 4 girls aged 5 and under.

And I was really scared for awhile!

Just when you think you’ve got it made when your kids grow up, they go and have kids of their own.

My house is not childproof!

We have a lot to cover today and a ton of photos.

I caught a break for this meal when both of my daughters showed up. They are both great cooks themselves, incredibly helpful in the kitchen and youngest right even volunteered for photo detail.  Having someone else take the photos was a big break and she took a TON of them so we’ve got a veritable photobook of recipes for you today.

EASTER DINNER!

One reason why I didn’t mind hosting and handling the cooking details is preparing Easter dinner really isn’t that difficult. Another reason is it’s a special occasion meal and with all the little ones running around I wanted to make it special because these are the types of occasions they will remember forever.

Remember those holiday meals when you were growing up?

I sure as fuck did. My ma’s mother, “MeMe” did the Easter dinner thing. She was a fantastic baker and when you walked into her house on Easter you were overwhelmed with the olfactory one-two punch of ham in the oven and homemade rolls baking.

Good God that shit smelled fantastic.

Well, I slacked off on the homemade roll thing this time even though I have done them before. Remember these?

Those we’re from the Building a Better Burger post from last year and they were meant to emulate my MeMe’s homemade rolls. I’m not sure why I’m talking about these since I didn’t make them this year but I digress.

Shit. Sorry.

Let’s get things started with the ham.

Why lookey there! It’s our old friend Farmer John! We’ve got about an 11 pound slab-o-pig ass right here that is already fully cooked! This is important since all we will be doing today is adding some flavor, a glaze and warming this up. This does not require 3-5 hours in the oven and it sure as shit doesn’t need to be heated to an internal temperature of 140-160 degrees.

Fuck that!

We want a juicy, tender and well seasoned ham not a goddamn cinder block of ham flavor. Don’t let the instructions on the package fool you.

First thing we are going to do is score the outside of the ham with a sharp knife using a diagonal cut. Then we will be following that with another diagonal in the opposite direction creating a diamond-shaped pattern.

Now, at the intersection of each of the cuts we will be inserting a whole clove. About 30-40 in all across the entire ham.

Hot damn! Look at that!

Next thing we want to do is make a glaze for the ham.

Ham Glaze.

1 16 ounce can of sliced pineapple. Reserve the slices and use 1 cup of the pineapple juice.

1 tablespoon of dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of honey.

3-4 shots of bourbon.

Put the pineapple juice in a bowl, then add in the honey, the mustard and bourbon. I used the good shit here.

Yes I’m sure many of you will do some shots of the bourbon as long as the bottle’s right there and already open and shit but pace yourself. We’ve got a bunch of work ahead of us.

Mix the ingredients and now baste the clove-studded ham with the glaze.

* Put that bourbon away already damn you!

Preheat the oven to about 315 degrees. No need to get the oven too hot.

Next take the reserved pineapple slices and skewer them, using toothpicks, all around the outside of the ham.

Like so.

My grandma MeMe used to also skewer maraschino cherries in the center of the pineapple slices but I couldn’t find the damn things. I took three goddamn trips around my entire grocery store and couldn’t find any. Yes, I checked the ice cream topping section and the door hanging dealies attached to the front of the freezer doors. Nothing!

Fuck it, we’ll go without.

Now let’s prep the roasting pan.

I used about 2 cups of water in the bottom of the pan and added in some aromatics including a handful of peppercorns, a few bay leaves and some whole cloves.

Place the rack in the roasting pan, put the prepped ham on the rack and cook it in the 315 degree oven for about 1 hour and 15 minutes but no more than an hour and 1/2. That’s all you need. The glaze should give a nice crackling crust to the outside of the ham when done.

The ham will need some time to rest and this will allow us to get the rest of our menu together.

Look at this tasty bastard!

Perfectly seasoned and just damn delicious.

Put an aluminum foil tent over the ham and let’s get after our side dishes.

Macaroni and cheese.

We’ve done this one before so for the full breakdown here’s the recipe from when we made Jerk Chicken and mac and cheese.

I’ll give a quick review but we’re going to let the photos do most of the leg work here.

First you’re going to need some cheese. How much and what kind you ask?

All the goddamn cheese and every goddamn kind!

The recipe up there uses aged extra sharp cheddar and that’s perfect for this dish. I was showing off for the family and included the cheese you see here. Clockwise from the top left we have fontina, aged Welsh Cheddar, Parmigiano reggiano, cave aged gruyere, aged Irish cheddar, red wax gouda and in the middle is the last piece of some aged English cheddar.

Did I use all of these cheeses in today’s dish?

The fuck do you think? Of course I did.

We made a double batch today so we cooked an entire 16 oz package of elbow macaroni.

Put the cooked macaroni in a large disposable baking pan, to help save on dishes for later.

Now grate up the cheese. Shit, I think it was about 4 total cups of cheese. This is where it’s helpful if you have some assistants in the kitchen.

Don’t use all of the cheese since we want to put out a snackable cheese tray while the company is waiting for dinner to be ready.

The cheese sauce used about 2/3 of the grated cheese. I heated up a roux with 4 tablespoons of flour, 4 tablespoons of butter gave it a stir for a couple of minutes then added in  2 1/2 cups of warm whole milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne and then melted in the cheese until the sauce was starting to thicken up.

Add the sauce to the cooked macaroni and combine.

Next add the remaining grated cheese over the top.

Now let’s make some buttered panko bread crumbs to put on top. This was about 1 cup of bread crumbs and 3 or so tablespoons of butter. Put in a pan over low heat to melt the butter and combine.

Check out the sexy action shot!

Next we’re going to spoon the buttered bread crumbs over the top of the macaroni and cheese. Sprinkle some essence or a seasoning blend of choice over the top. If you want to just use paprika or cayenne or just some black pepper that’s up to you.

Increase the heat on the oven to 375 and get this pan inside! Check after about 25 minutes and it will be ready when browned and delicious looking.

Can you tell that my kid loves macaroni and cheese? I think I sorted through about 50 pictures of just the making of this dish. Look! A closeup!

My son-in-law handles the ham carving duties quite famously – and he always has beer! This allows me to get everything else ready for service.

Let’s see. What else did we have?

A bowl of fresh strawberries and blueberries. Holy fucking shit those strawberries were delightful.

Brother DJ Taj also made a batch of potato salad.

He did the work but I’m pretty sure it was cooked potatoes, some sauteed onion, mayo, dijon mustard, salt and pepper and he topped the salad with sliced hard boiled eggs and black olives for presentation. Damn tasty.

We also had a spinach salad – not pictured – and some dinner rolls. So sue me, I didn’t make them. I had other shit to tend to.

We also had plenty of beers, a couple of bottles of wine and some bourbon for later.

Just look at this spread.

Here’s the closeup or “glamour” shot.

The kid has this food photography thing down. Wish she took photos for me every week.

All told it was a great gathering – even for us atheist bastards in attendance. We had great food, good times and there was a horde of little ones running around and playing with their Easter baskets.

You folks with kids at home will understand but I had forgotten that that many kids comes with it’s own minefield.

Damn, I’m glad that I’m off of hosting holiday dinners until Thanksgiving. After Saint Patrick’s day and Easter dinner I’m gonna need a fuckin’ break.

Hope all of you good folks had a good Spring/religious or non-religious gathering with family.

We’ll get back to regular Sunday Gravy proceedings next week with a real “hoot” of a recipe.

Roast owl!

Just fucking with you but it is a real fun one for next week.

I’m back in mid-season form.

Thanks for reading folks.

PEACE!