On Easter Lamb and Wine

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

We here at CDKitchen advance or preference no religious belief. We do, however, like to talk about religious holidays because that's when people scout about the internet in search of food recipes. This week we gots two biggies: Passover and Easter. Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating Deity's sparing them back before the common era, followed by a seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread. Easter is a holiday celebrating Jesus' resurrection after three days of suffering and then death.

I won't go into the complexities of these holidays--there's all sorts of movies you can rent--except to stress that people eat a lot of food for them. In fact, some believe that the Last Supper or Mystical Dinner was in fact a Passover Seder! The bread Jesus broke could have been matzo, y'all. The relationship between these two holidays—at least this time of year for Christians and Jews—is therefore pretty close, although the precise details of "when?" and "what?" continue to be debated.

One thing I think we do know for sure, however, was that Jesus was a bachelor! According to all sorts of scholars, those rumors about Jesus having a wife and kids have scant empirical evidence to support them, no matter what a very wealthy fiction writer has to say. That's why I think we need to put much more faith in what I shall call The Da Vino Code: proof positive of Jesus' bachelordom was all that wine he miraculously produced and shared with folks. Turning water to wine was one of his first miracles, and sharing wine with his homies (er, apostles) was one of his goodbye party favors. As we all know, booze is the first major food group for bachelors (as I noted in my first column).

In Jesus' time, however, it's important to keep in mind that the rule with drinking wine, of course, was moderation. In this sense, "do what Jesus did" is probably a good idea (and if you fall off the moderation wagon, here's some help). In the Jewish tradition there's plenty of stories to suggest that getting ripped was very bad form (e.g., Noah apparently got drunken naked in the bible, which apparently was quite the scandal). In other words, you probably wouldn't see Jesus and his peeps drunkenly stumbling out of their last dinner together on the ancient equivalent of TMZ.

Now, one thing that is certainly different today are eating habits. For many people on the Easter holiday, lamb represents both the innocence of the soul and Jesus. And like humans often seem to do with revered symbols, we eat them! The "Easter Lamb" dish is a traditional dish served for Easter dinner; typically, though, folks wouldn't be eating lamb for the Passover Seder because guests might worry they were eating the Paschal Lamb (the Paschal Lamb was a lamb that would have been sacrificed to deity on the first night of Passover, so serving lamb at dinner might cause folks to worry they were eating something inappropriate). This tradition carries though to this day, although I'm told eating some Kosher cuts of lamb are technically okay for Passover and the following feast.

For some Christians, the lamb served for Easter is a bone-in roasted leg o' lamb. I, however, have never been very good at roasting things. I'm not sure why, but the art of roasting lamb or turkey or anything is not one I have cultivated well. Consequently, when I have gatherings I serve curried lamb, which is ironically easier to prepare for me. This dish has complex flavors and, consequently, is a little more involved than my normal recipes, but I promise the pay-off is delicious. Serve with wine!

Serves/Makes: 4

***NUT MASALA***

• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped
• 1 piece (2 inch size) ginger root, grated
• 3 ounces unsalted cashews
• 1/4 cup boiling water

***MAIN DISH***

• 2 tablespoons garam masala (store bought)
• 2 pounds boneless leg of lamb
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 3 dried red chilies
• OR
• 1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 piece (1 inch size) ginger root, grated
• 1 small clump cilantro, chopped
• 1 cup half and half
• 1/3 cup water
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice