Saturday, March 10, 2012

March 8, 2012 Lunch – Café Trang Dinner – Roasted Chic Chicken with sautèed pasta and steamed broccoli and cauliflower

March 8, 2012  Lunch – Café Trang  Dinner – Roasted Chic Chicken with sautèed pasta and steamed broccoli and cauliflower

I met Mike Verhagen at Café Trang for lunch.  I always get Pho with thinly sliced beef tenderloin and beef meat balls (No. 21. $8.25).  Mike was studying the menu trying to decide what to get and I asked him the three or four simple questions that guide one to one’s preferred choice of dishes among the hundreds at a Vietnamese restaurant.  Rice or noodles, if noodles, stir fried, fried, boiled and served at room temperature, padded into soft paddies, or in soup.  If in soup, bean thread or wheat or rice noodles.  Then what choice of garnishes on the noodle dishes served at room temperature, such as grilled chicken or beef or pork or shrimp, egg rolls, shrimp sausage, grilled tofu, etc  If soup, seafood or beef or chicken or a combination of them all.  Mike chose No. 44 grilled pork and egg rolls on Bun noodles.  After lunch I went to Ta Lin and bought Mackerel, lots of different noodles, Pho meat balls, Pho beef flavoring for the soup stock, some baby bok choy; shallots, bean sprouts and fresh Pho noodles.

I spoke to Suzette and she said she would bring home a roasted chicken from the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery, which was great because I ended up working late.  So Suzette came home and started cooking dinner without me.  She chopped mushrooms and onions and yellow and red bell peppers and sautéed them in a skillet with some PPI conch shells pasta while she steamed flowerets of broccoli and cauliflower.  We had a simple dinner with a bottle of Fitch-Leese Sauvignon Blanc ($9.99 at Costco). 

After dinner I made a large quantity of Ma Po Dou Fu with 1 fresh poblano and 1 green chili, three Chinese eggplants, 1 Mexican squash, 9 ounces of firm tofu, 1 Tbs. of sliced wood ear, five sliced portabella mushrooms, 1 lb. of BBQ pork and rice cooking wine, soy sauce and sesame oil and thickened it with corstarch.

Bon Appètit

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