January 31, 2012: Lunch – Vietnamese Flour Sheets with egg rolls and shrimp sausage. Dinner – Big Steak Dinner with roasted Sweet Potato

January 31, 2012: Lunch – Vietnamese Flour Sheets with egg rolls and shrimp sausage.  Dinner – Big Steak Dinner with roasted Sweet Potato

There are several particularly nice dishes served at Vietnam 2000 (corner of San Mateo and Zuni/Lead/Coal).  One of my favorites is Flour Sheets which are strips of thin rice noodles that are about two inches wide and about four inches long that are softened in warm water and laid on top of sautéed mung bean sprouts and cucumber slivers and then topped with you choice of topping and garnished with fried onions, chopped basil and chopped roasted peanuts..  This is served with the sweet traditional fish sauce dressing.   It is served warm, so perfect for a winter day that is not too cold.  On really cold days I prefer soup with rice noodles.  After lunch I went to Quarters and bought two cases of distressed beer and three discounted bottles of wine for $4.00 each (a French Chateau Bonnet rosè (a 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot blend from Bordeaux) and two bottles of 2008 Spanish Pirineos Mesache (an interesting blend of 35% old vine Macabeo, 35% Gewürtztraminer, and 30% Chardonnay form the Bodegas Pireneos in Barbastro, Spain in the Somontano Denominacíon de Origen) that I had never seen before. 

For dinner we had decided to grill steak.  I rode 18 miles and was delayed by three business calls on the trail to Paseo del Norte so did not arrive home until almost 6:00 p.m.

When I arrived home tired and sore, I was pleasantly surprised to find Suzette at home and that she had started roasting the yellow sweet potato and the delicata squash in the oven (that we had purchased at Sunflower Market on Sunday) and my spirits were uplifted further when Suzette announced that Albuquerque Bites had expressed an interest in syndicating this food blog.  I sat for a bit to regain some strength and then started chopping 1 large shallot (about two Tbs.) and about two cups of portabella mushroom caps (Costco) and then picked and stripped the leaves off three or four sprigs of fresh thyme.

Suzette then heated the PPI cooked artichoke and I made a simple sauce of mayonnaise, the juice of ½ lemon, a pinch of salt and about 1 teaspoon of dried tarragon.

Since Peter Eller and I planned to go to Café Istanbul for lunch on Wednesday, February 1, 2012, I suggested that I make an appetizer using the last six dates I previously had purchased there.   We had eaten an interesting appetizer at a restaurant in N.Y.C. last January; a sautéed bacon wrapped date.  Simple and delicious.  So I wrapped each date with a strip of thick cut bacon and secured the bacon wrapped dates on thin bamboo skewers and put the skewers into a frying pan to cook.   After the bacon had cooked to brown on the side facing the pan I flipped them and cooked the other side and then we had a small argument when I removed the dates from the skewers to cook the sides of the bacon strips that had not yet had direct contact with the pan because the bacon fell off the dates.  But Suzette allowed me to prevail when I told her that I wanted the bacon to crisp and it could only crisp if it had no contact with the pan. In NY this problem was solved by using toothpicks for each date that were cut or broken close to the surface of the bacon wrapped date, so the date could be turned, so all sides could get direct heat (we did not have toothpicks). 

Suzette took the sweet potato out of the oven, peeled it and then sliced it into 1/2 inch thick slices She then laid them in a skillet with olive oil and butter and sautéed them to golden brown.  Once golden brown she sprinkled brown sugar on top to encrust with brown carmel crust.  Suzette said this is exactly the way her family cooked this type of sweet potato in Pennsylvania when she was growing up.

When the bacon and dates were fully browned we took them off the heat and Suzette put a 1 lb. bone in rib eye steak on the grill for about ten minutes and I started sautèing the shallots and thyme in a skillet with 1 Tbs. of olive oil and 1 Tbs. of butter and about 1 ½ Tbs. of hot bacon fat from the date pan and then added the mushrooms and cooked the entire mixture for about five minutes until the mushrooms had softened and taken up some of the fat.  I then added about 11/2 Tbs. of Amontillado sherry and turned the heat down to simmer the mushroom mixture. 

We then discussed the wine situation. I suggested trying the Chateau Bonnet Rosè, since I needed to try it, but Suzette thought that it would not be heavy enough for a big steak dinner, so I suggested that we drink the Chateau Bonnet with two of the Italian sausages and some braised cabbage on Wednesday or Thursday evening and we agreed.  Then I suggested that the heaviest wine we had was either the Wellington Victory or Noir de Noir, so Suzette went to the wine cellar and brought back a 2005 Wellington Victory, which is a deep purple claret blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot in the Bordeaux style).  I cut the steak that was cooked to medium rare into slices and we plated up dishes with slices of the steak topped with some of the mushroom mixture and slices of the caramelized roasted sweet potato and ½ of the artichoke each (See picture).

The sautéed dates and bacon along with the meal and the wine was also a nice complement to the heaviness of the steak, which turned out to be a bit grainy.

The wine only got better as it opened up during diner and we continued to drink it after the meal until the bottle was finished and we were exceedingly satisfied with our great big steak dinner.  The sweetness of the sweet potato and dates balanced the heaviness of the steak and bacon for a very pleasant combination of textures and flavors and the smooth balanced wine was also an excellent complement to the food.  The whole prep time, not counting the squash baking time, was around 30 minutes with both of us cooking.  We enjoyed eating our big meal with some new ingredients and dishes and a wonderful wine as we watched Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert take humorous shots at the Florida Republican Presidential campaign and each other over Colbert’s Super-PAC.

Bon Appètit