On most Easters, you could find me celebrating with my mom and grandmother. The three of us would gather in Cannon Beach to eat crab, walk on the beach, read, and stroll through town. It was a great tradition, and now that my grandmother is gone and I’m back from Paris, we can continue the tradition.

Getting the urge to cook, I decided to make a simple American meal for Fabrice to celebrate the day. After selecting an appropriate menu the week before, I spent three days and visited five different stores looking for the right ingredients. Who would have known dried cherries and cream cheese would be so hard to find in Paris?

Thankfully I finally found what I needed at La Grande Epicerie. An hour and a half later and 150 Euros poorer, I emerged from the store with just one bag of groceries. But what a selection – everything you could ever imagine or want under one roof. If you shopped there every day, you’d never have to cook again. The selection of ready-made foods is incredible and always changing. I almost wanted to move in and bask in the glow of the food lamps. But I have things to do, so I grudgingly left the store and took the metro home.

We began our meal with an antipasti plate, composed of little bites I found at La Grande Epicerie: sun dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, Parma ham, Chorizo sausage, olives from Nice, balsamic marinated cipoline onions, and baby marinated artichoke hearts. This was accompanied of course by a bottle of my favorite champagne, Rene Geoffroy. My mom and I visited this tiny producer on a recent trip to champagne, and I fell head over heals for this sunshine in a glass. A word to the wise: if you ever see a bottle in the States, buy it immediately. You won’t be disappointed!

For our second course, I made my recipe for iceberg wedge with blue cheese and bacon. When I originally experimented with this recipe, my goal was to create a lighter, healthier version. By adding nonfat yogurt to the mayonnaise, the dressing took on an unexpected but pleasant tang that paired nicely with the blue cheese. Since the French don’t have buttermilk (Fabrice looked at me with a puzzled look on his face when I asked where I could buy some), I ended up making my own. By simply adding one tablespoon of lemon juice (or vinegar) to one cup of milk, let it stood at room temperature for an hour, and voila! A nice little trick in case you ever forget to buy it at the store. Click here for the recipe.

For our main course, I made one of my signature dishes, roasted pork tenderloin with Port, cherries and onions. Although it sounds like an odd combination, the flavor of red sauteed onions and cherries soaked in Port, a little marmalade and some butter is quite fabulous. The pork and accompanying sauce is served over smashed red potatoes moistened with cream cheese, a little butter and warm milk. The cream cheese adds a nice unusual tang to the potatoes and helps create a creamier texture.

The meal was then wrapped up with vanilla panna cotta with raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce. But instead of powdered gelatin like we have in the States, the French only use gelatin in sheets. Not knowing the bloom strength (how strong the gelatin is) of either gelatin, I added five, two-gram sheets to the panna cotta. This resulted in a firmer dessert, but I missed the softer, sexier versions I’ve made at home. Click here for the recipe with stewed cherries.

By the end of the meal, Fabrice and I were well fed. Draining off the last of the champagne, we bit the heads off a few chocolate bunnies and deposited ourselves on the couch for a movie. Another Easter well spent.

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