April 22, 2012 Lunch - Cheese and Wine and bread; Dinner- Stir Fried Salmon with Vegetables

April 22, 2012  Lunch -  Cheese and Wine and bread;  Dinner- Stir Fried Salmon with Vegetables

When one spends a large portion of one’s day buying new food items, the thing to do the next day is to eat some of them.  I awoke and had a bagel and the last of my old carton of whitefish salad with a slice tomato, sliced red onion and capers and hot tea and said good bye to Suzette, who went to work in Los Lunas. I then sliced up five pears and poached them with some wine and sugar and the zest of one lemon and the juice of one lemon. Then I started to make gravid lax by measuring 1/2 cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of salt into a bowl and crushing 1 tsp. of black peppercorns and adding them.  I put the mixture aside when Max Aragon came by around 10:30 am to make measurements for an extension of a patio awning we intend to add as part of the back yard remodel.

Max was kind enough to say that he would go with me to the Albuquerque Art Museum to see the Francisco Goya show, so at 11:50 am we drove over to the Museum at the end of the free morning period at noon. The Goya show was the 80 aquatint prints he did in 1799 called Los Caprichos (whims).  They involve images of the foibles and hypocrisies of Spanish society of Goya’s time and although caricature like and sketchy, they include many strong images.

When we got home a little after 2:00 it appeared that Suzette had been home and gone, so I called her and she said she was at the Earth Day celebration at the Coop at Central and Carlisle and would be home in about 45 minutes.

I was hungry and asked Max if he was interested in something to eat and he said yes, so I decided to make a light cheese and meat platter and serve a bottle of wine.  So I immediately went to the fridge and took out the last 7 or ight asparagus from an old bag and snapped them and steamed them and then drizzled them with Spanish olive oil.  Then I got out Manchego, Dubliner cheddar, the new French brie, the Celebrity fig flavored goat cheese, Romano Pecorino, some Genoa salami and the coarse Braunschwieger and placed them on a cheese board and handed Max a fesh pear to slice while I fetched one of the new bottles of a Spanish tempranillo/Genache blend.  But I did not open it, because Max said he and Jane really were enjoying rosés.  I went back down stairs and fetched a chilled bottle of Spanish Albero organic 2010 rosé and then sliced and heated slices of the new Whole grain bread from Costco and Suzette joined us at the table to try the cheeses and wine, although she had eaten a quesadilla before going to the Earth Day celebration.  Suzette mentioned several interesting observations about the Earth Day celebration, including seeing the Old Windmill Cheese folks and that they had committed to donating cheese to the June 23, 2012 Field to Food special dinner at the Center for Ageless Living. Yeah.

My favorite combo with the Spanish rosé was a piece of bread spread with Braunschwieger and the fig flavored goat cheese.

We drank the Spanish rosé quickly, so I went back downstairs for a bottle of the Le Fermé Julien 2010 French rosé and poured it and we continued eating and drinking.  My favorite combo with the French wine was bread smeared with the French brie. 

Spanish wine was intensely fruity and although 12.5% alcohol could be drunk like lemonade.  The French rosé was more austere and better suited to cut through the rich creamy and acidic brie.

Then at around 4:00 p.m. I asked Max if he wanted to see how to make gravid lax, and he said, “Sure.” I had already made the dry mixture, so I fetched the fresh dill from the fridge and filleted and cleaned the salmon and cut it to the length of the pyrex dish (about one half of the length of the fish filet) we had chosen to use.  Then Suzette and I showed him how to layer the dill and then sprinkle the fish with the dry mix and add layers of dill and dry mixture to the fish until the two sides of the filets were layered in mirror images of each other and the whole assemblage was covered with saran and weighted with a brick and in the fridge.

When Max took off for Santa Fe at around 4:30 p.m. I could not think about dinner but by 6:30 p.m. Suzette, who had only eaten a few nibbles of cheese, said she was hungry.  I said I was not hungry, but Suzette decided to stir fry one of the left over filets with the last of the PPI Chicken and vegetables.  So Suzette got out the salmon filet and scaled it and cleaned it and cut into about 1 inch squares and then made a two egg pancake and cut the egg pancake into squares while I cleaned and sliced the last four or five baby portabella mushrooms.

Then Suzette cooked the salmon and the mushrooms and added the PPI chicken and vegetables and some Hoisen sauce and dark soy and viola, a tasty fresh cooked dinner.  After all the wine we had drunk, the only thing we could think to drink with dinner was water.  The addition of the Hoisen actually eliminated the salty flavor of the dish from the soy sauce that had dominated the flavor of the dish before.  A new discovery.  To get rid of salty soy flavor; add Hoisen or something sweet.        

I went to bed at 8:30 p.m., drunk, full and sleepy.

Bon Appétit