November 1, 2011 - Lunch – New Mexican Open Face Sandwich Dinner – Poached Salmon with Linguine and Mint Sauce

November 1, 2011 - Lunch – New Mexican Open Face Sandwich

                                Dinner – Poached Salmon with Linguine and Mint Sauce

Lunch was leftovers.  I took some of the leftover taco meat and sautéed it in a small skillet.  I then placed on top of the taco meat in the pan the leftover Frittata from Saturday October 29 and poured on some Cervantes Red Chile Sauce (Costco) and covered it to sweat and heat through.  I then toasted a tortilla and placed it on a plate and put the heated mixture on the tortilla.  It was wonderful, the cheese, tomatoes, kale, eggs and garlic in the Frittata combined with the taco meat and chili sauce into a mass of flavors and great tasting lumpy mass that melted into the tortilla.  I drank the leftover yogurt drink from Istanbul, it saved my stomach, from a fate worse than death.                             

Dinner - I am embarrassed to describe my mistake, but it is laughable.  We are trying to make a fish soup with the leftover clams and broth from Friday night and so I thawed out four pieces of salmon that we had frozen the last time we made gravad lax.  Suzette decided that we need to create a new dish.  Suzette poached the salmon in a white wine and butter sauce with thyme and tarragon and garlic and garlic greens that I picked in the garden, a sort of Court Bouillon. 

We decided to turn the left over linguine into Linguine with Pesto Sauce but I made a mistake when I went to the place into the fridge where I thought I had placed the pesto and picked up a bottle of mint sauce instead.  Suzette’s cooking of the Linguine and Mint Sauce was great.  She sautéed the linguine in butter and olive oil in a large skillet and then added the sauce to it and tossed it until well mixed.

We served the linguine with the poached salmon and some of Suzette’s Cranberry Sauce and it was lovely, but when I started eating the pasta, I said, “This tastes odd”.  After a minute’s discussion, Suzette said, “It is mint sauce instead of pesto.”  I said, “Yuch!”.  So here is one of the dangers of too many leftovers, especially if you do not label your leftovers, which most commercial kitchens do.  We opened a Viognier 2002 from Wellington and it had gone slightly bad (musty with oxidation).  We decided that we need to start drinking our older bottles of wine, especially the whites.

So a bad meal in general,. . . but we saved two pieces of the poached salmon and the poaching medium leftover for the fish soup in the near future.  So, I guess I can say that this meal is a good example of one of our creative leftover strategies;  which is that we occasionally intentionally design meals to create leftovers as ingredients for future meals.  This bad meal experience was somewhat dispelled by the anticipation of having most of the necessary leftovers for a great fish soup. 

The best part of the meal was enjoying a warm boiled large artichoke I had bought at Sunflower for $.99 last week with a lemon mayonnaise sauce I made that I flavored with some garlic greens and thyme that was also good with the Salmon.  

This is a good example of how mistakes do not always result in a wonderful creative discovery, but often end in a less than satisfying meal.

Bon A
pétit

don't copy this rccipe