Happy Bunny Day!

Ah, springtime is nigh (for those of you who live in places with seasons that is) and the Easter Bunny has come bearing goodies. As we ended up not going away as originally planned, we decided to have an Easter lunch for a few friends. Which then turned into about 20 friends, not including kiddies! Ah well, what's a few more mouths to feed eh?

I decided to make my own ham (okay I must confess I didn't brine it myself, but I did cook it from raw), a leg of lamb and other suitable accompanying comestibles. The menu as follows:

- White trash ham (in case the party turned out to be too highbrow, this would bring it down a few notches) with cranberry relish
- Roast leg of lamb with Salsa Verde
- Gratin dauphinois
- Orzo salad with basil, feta and cherry tomatoes
- Buttered peas (a token gesture for those worried about getting their quota of greens)
- Tart au citron
- Gâteau CocoFramboise
- Cheese platter (chèvre, St Nectaire, Gorgonzola, triple cream Brie)
- Homemade hot cross buns

Chubby Hubby and his missus, S, were gracious enough to accept our invitation and they wanted to do a post on the luncheon. As they are infinitely better equipped to do this, I have the honour of gracing their fab blog in all my glorious, post-cooking marathon gorgeousness (NOT!).

Lessons learned from this party:
- 500g of orzo is plenty for 20 people if there is other food. As "never knowingly under-cater" is my motto, 1kg of orzo went in the pot and I think we shall be eating it till summer, ahem.
- Yeast dough takes twice as long to rise here contrary to what I thought. The humidity must win out over the heat and delay everything as I found out at 2am the night before, ugh.
- Putting the gratin dauphinois under the grill and then going out to greet guests/have a drink is not recommended (see photo on CH's site, a tad beyond golden brown)
- Don't pull faces at the camera, you never know where it might appear!

Lots of eating and drinking happened regardless of course and we got some lovely Easter chocolates to boot (look at the hand decorated chocolate egg above that was hand carried by a friend in from London that morning!). It's worth all the work in the end, just going to put my feet up now, zzzzz....