It’s been a while since I wrote a food-oriented post—and of course a holiday weekend is just the thing to trigger one. Lisa’s parents were here this weekend, so our relatively freewheeling Easter dinner that we have honed over the past few years got expanded a little stylistically while reining in a few of the more eccentric ingredients.

The menu: deviled eggs for hors d’oeuvres; glazed ham; mashed potatoes; asparagus; and mushrooms. The deviled eggs were the most restrained compared to past years, where I used wasabi in place of the horseradish my parents always used to perk things up. Instead of wasabi, I just used hot sauce, slightly increased the salt for flavor, and diced up some shallot very fine to mix into the filling. The eggs were superb: eminently edible but leaving one still hungry—and thirsty. As is also traditional at Easter, I accompanied mine with a small amount of bourbon over ice as I was cooking. This year it was Blanton’s, a serendipitous find that I was delighted to have in my liquor cabinet. No juleps this year, though; for one thing, at 30-something degrees, it was too damned cold out to have them or want them.

The potatoes were simple too—half and half and butter in the place of the chicken broth and buttermilk that I’ve used in the past to give them flavor, and I thought the potatoes were bland as a result. But! They were a perfect foil to the mushrooms (sliced, cooked in olive oil and butter with more diced shallot and two cloves of garlic, and then finished covered in the pan), which were a hit. The garlic was definitely the thing. Alas the asparagus! cooked much too long.

The ham was tasty, but—and here regional prejudices rear their head—I do wish I could have found a proper ham. And by proper, I mean country ham, dry-aged, the kind that comes in a burlap bag and tastes a little like a salt lick and a little like a smoky prosciutto. That’s the ham I had a lot of growing up, both at home and at church, where ham biscuits were the order of the day after a sunrise service. But this ham—a spiral sliced ham with a brown sugar and orange juice glaze, was pretty good in its own way—just not quite the way my mouth remembered it.

After dinner, of course, the requisite ham biscuits. Mine reflected my inner culinary struggle, with mustard on top and butter on the bottom. Yes! Butter with ham. And if you think it’s insane, ask the street vendors in Provence selling jambon cru sandwiches with thick local butter about it, and then come back and tell me I was right. Of course it‘s not the Provençal coming out in me so much as the Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother, but oh well.

Others had clam chowder with dinner—Legal’s, sold prepackaged, and it occurred to me how much easy access to the greatest ambrosia breeds contempt. Watching the others eat it made me think about the Bull Island clam chowder I grew up with, cooked with a clear broth, not milk, and certainly not with tomato.

I’ve been drinking some pretty high hop content beers lately. A few days ago, I brought home (finally) the new Sam Adams Hallertau Imperial Pilsner, which bears approximately the same relation to regular Sam Adams as regular Sam bears to a Budweiser (American version). Floral, elegant, bright with hops (Hallertau, of course) without being overly bitter, and pleasantly complex. The beer raised Lisa’s eyebrows, and that’s hard to do.

Her eyebrows were raised a bit higher when she tasted tonight’s beer, the Unearthly Imperial India Pale Ale from Southern Tier Brewing Company. Imperial, connoting a higher-alcohol variety of a standard beer variety, is getting a workout here, taking a standard IPA to unheard of heights. 11% ABV and high but well-balanced IBUs are the start of the story, as is the unearthly orange glow and the aroma, reminiscent of standing over an opened bag of fresh hops. Little to no head, lacing the side of the glass very slightly. Initial sharpness from the hops gives way to a lightly malty back of the tongue with good strong floral character throughout. I wasn’t familiar with this brewery before tonight but I’ll be seeking it out in the future.

Update: Nice article from the NY Times Food section tasting a variety of “extreme” beers, in which the Unearthly is namechecked (though not actually tasted).

The title of this post is a reference to an old Bloom County strip in which Opus, promoted to the “Lifestyles” section (then a new concept) of the local newspaper, does an article on eggnog (“Everyone’s agog over eggnog!”), inadvertently starts a trend, and picks up a check for a couple thou from the U.S. Eggnog Association. He closes in the last panel with an aside to the audience: “I knew this was a racket!”

The thought crossed my mind after seeing articles about absinthe in the Boston Globe and the New York Times today (the latter owns the former). Hmm. If one were to follow the money, would one find a big absinthe concern behind the apparent coincidence?

I’m encouraged by the honest discussion in the latter article about the quality of modern absinthe prior to this latest revival. I tasted the stuff in the late 1990s—a former Cheeselord brought back a bottle from Europe. I thought it was interesting, but ultimately not something I would want to drink much of, thanks to the overwhelming licorice-like flavors. But I knew the drink’s reputation and was curious about how it might have been better in its heyday. Looks like I won’t have to wait long to find out.

(Oh: and regarding “agog over eggnog”: if you are a lifestyles editor yourself, don’t use this phrase in a headline. It’s been done.)

WSJ: Trappist Command: Thou Shalt Not Buy Too Much of Our Beer. The article makes me want to hunt down some Westvleteren 12 for my birthday, as do the comments on BeerAdvocate.

Two unrelated beverage news items in my browser this morning. I was just thinking the other day about how you never see Dixie Blackened Voodoo anymore, when I saw this article about the devastation at the original Dixie plant as a result of Katrina. The brand is being brewed in Wisconsin on a contract basis, but I hope they can bring the original brewery back around. Blackened Voodoo and the original Dixie are too good with Cajun food to continue to be brewed that far north.

And Ardbeg, which I enjoy as a fallback when I am drinking Scotch away from home if Laphroaig is unavailable, has been crowned the World Whiskey of the Year and the best Scotch Single Malt. I like Ardbeg for combining the peatiness of Laphroaig and other Islay malts with the smoothness of a blend.