A day of lavish indulgence. I have not had sushi in a long time and today was the day because I was not terribly busy. It takes me about 1½ hours for me to eat sushi. Azuma serves my favorite sushi because they serve so much of it that their sushi is the freshest. Also, they are a client and they provide a VIP 10% discount card to repeat customers, if you ask for it, and they cater to one’s wishes precisely. What I mean when I say they cater to one’s wishes, is they will adjust the menu to your requests. It seems to me that, more than any other restaurant, they treat their fish as just fish and meeting your requests is most important because they are want you to have a great food experience and feel good and return. So it is okay to request adjustments to the menu descriptions.
Even though I had had several slices of toasted whole grain bread spread with cream cheese and white fish salad for breakfast, I ordered Chirachi Donbori. I always order Chirachi Donbori ($14.95 at lunch) because I like sushi rice with my raw fish and because it is the most cost effective way to get a wide selection of fish. At Azuma Chirachi Donbori is a small box filled with selected cuts of sashimi (raw fish) plus shaved daikon, two slices of pickled daikon, two slices of egg omelet, two slices of imitation crab and thin slices of cucumber on a bed of sushi rice. There are generally 14 to 16 pieces of fish depending upon who is slicing it. Today I requested, as I usually do, that I wanted no red snapper or mahi mahi and more ultra white tuna and yellow tail. I received two slices of octopus tentacle, four slices of ultra white tuna, four slices of yellow tail tuna, three slices of salmon and two slices of ahi red tuna in the box. I have an odd way of eating sushi. I cut the rather large sashimi slices into four or five small bite sized pieces and cut the large strips of pickled ginger into small pieces and dip a piece of ginger with a piece of fish into the wasabi and soy mixture. I also drink lots of green tea. I probably drink eight to ten cups of tea during lunch. So it takes about 1½ hours to eat the small box of fish and rice and I love it.
I then went by Sunflower market and purchased chicken sausages ($1.99/lb. on sale) and fresh Atlantic farm raised salmon ($6.99/lb., also on sale) and beautiful fresh mushrooms ($2.99/lb.) I missed the sale on asparagus ($.97/lb.), which starts tomorrow.
When I returned home, I called Suzette and told her I had salmon and wanted to make my new favorite fish dish, poached salmon with a scallop and spinach cream sauce, so took four scallops (Costco, $13.99/lb.) from the freezer to thaw.
I did not get home from an appointment until about , so we made a quick meal of it. We heated PPI rice. Suzette poached the salmon with the four scallops quartered in 1/3 cup white wine (La Montanana Spanish Viura from Trader Joe’s), 1/2 cup vegetable stock (instead of water, made on Sunday) and 1 Tbs. butter, with 1 minced shallot and 1 Tbs. chopped parsley and 1 tsp. of thyme. Then she removed the salmon to a heated oven and, in a separate pot, heated 2 Tbs. of butter with 2 Tbs. of flour and we cooked it for two minutes to cook the flour and then added some of the poaching medium to the roux and when the roux was creamy enough to pour, poured the roux into the pot in which the salmon had been poached with the rest of the cooking medium and scallops. This made a cream sauce, but it was a little thick, so I added about 2 or 3 Tbs of amontillado sherry to the sauce to thin it to a more creamy consistency. We then added about two cups of rinsed and spun spinach to the pot of sauce and cooked for a minute to wilt the spinach.
We then plated up each soup bowl with a layer of rice topped with a piece of salmon and covered that with the cream spinach sauce. We poured glasses of the Viura white wine and ate. When I tasted the dish I realized I had forgotten to cook sliced mushrooms into the roux and sauce and, thus, the dish lacked a little flavor, so I grated some nutmeg onto the top of the spinach. I love this easy, healthy, delicious way to eat fresh fish.
Later, I ate the last of the chocolate fondue with cognac and stayed up to watch Terrence? Mallick’s meditation on the horrors of war, “The Thin Red Line”.
A big food day.
Bon Appètit
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