September 17, 2012, Lunch - Vietnam 2000; Dinner - Parsley mousse stuffed Chcken with sauteed Squash and corn and sweet Potato and Pecan pie

September 17, Lunch - Vietnam 2000; Dinner – Parsley mousse stuffed Chicken and sautéed squash and corn and sweet potato and pecan pie

Willy and I went to Vietnam 2000 at the corner of San Mateo and Zuni for lunch.  We got the No. 21 which is grilled pork and pork egg rolls on a bed of cooked vermicelli rice noodles and at the bottom are strips of basil and lettuce and fresh mung bean sprouts.  A very delicious dish, especially on a warm day.  The dish is served with a sweetened fish sauce sauce that soaks into the noodles and makes them moist and flavored.

Suzette and I had agreed to have dinner with Charles and Susan Palmer.   I had bought a 6 lb. fryer at Lowe’s on Saturday but had cut a long sliver out of it when I made a chicken noodle soup for lunch. So I had to truss the chicken, since I had a long open seam in the chicken I decided to make the Michel Guérard’s recipe for Roast Chicken with Parsley (page 217 in Cuisine Minceur) and then after stuffing the chicken to truss it.

The recipe calls for a 2 ½ lb. chicken or guinea fowl.  I had made the recipe before, so it did not take very long to make the stuffing of;

5 Tbsp. of mince parsley

1 Tbsp. of minced chives

2 tsp. of minced tarragon (I used a little more)

2 shallots, peeled and finely minced

2 medium mushrooms, stems trimmed, rinsed and finely minced

1 Tbsp. of fromage blanc

Salt and pepper

The formage blanc is a combination of ricotta cheese and yogurt.  I had both, but when I opened my PPI ricotta, it was bad and I used Page’s Plain Greek yogurt  and crumbled Feta instead.

I minced all the ingredients and then added about a Tbsp. or two of each of the yogurt and the feta so the mixture would be slightly emulsified and a bit of salt and pepper .

I then stuffed the mixture under the skin of the chicken as the recipe instructs and trussed the open wound close with trussing needles and string.

We then salted and brushed the outside of the chicken with butter so it would cook to a golden brown and laid the chicken in a roasting pan.   We placed the chicken in a 425˚ preheated oven and roasted it for 20 minutes then turned down the oven to 350˚ and roasted for another 40 minutes as the recipe instructed.  Unfortunately, we needed to go to dinner so we removed the chicken before it was completely cooked which as the recipe says is when the juices run clear without any sign of pink.

When we arrived at the Palmer we discovered that the chicken was not fully cooked because it was a 6 lb. chicken and not a 2 ½ lb. chicken so we sectioned the bird and microwaved the sections for 4 minutes to fully cook the flesh.

After the chicken was in the oven Suzette and I walked to the garden to see what squashes might be ripe and we found that our zucchini had grown hugely over night to a length of about 10 inches, so we picked it and a round green 8 ball squash. 

I then diced into 1/4 inch squares ½ of the zucchini and 8 ball squashes and two small yellow crook necked squashes from Suzette’s organic garden at the Center for Ageless Living with two cloves of garlic and 1/3 yellow onion.  Suzette started sautéing the squashes and onion and garlic in butter and olive oil while I diced small red and yellow cherry tomatoes and an heirloom tomato from Suzette’s organic garden in Los Lunas, which Suzette threw into the sautéing squash mixture about five minutes before Suzette finished the dish.   We put the sautéed squash in a serving bowl and placed the chicken on a steel pan and covered it with aluminum foil and I fetched a chilled bottle of Concannon Sauvignon Blanc and we took them over to the Palmers’ around 6:45 p.m.

When we arrived Susan was still cooking but there was a lovely table full of cheeses and toasted French bread slices and crackers, so we nibbled while Susan shucked ears of corn and constructed a sweet potato and pecan pie by placing a dough in the bottom of a deep pie dish and then covering it with a mixture of sweet potato stuffing and then a layer of caramel cooked pecan halves.  The recipe Susan used for the sweet potato pie was from one of Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks.   So after we had nibbled on Boursin, brie, blue, and other cheeses for a few minutes and the pie was in the oven and the corn boiled to tender, we sliced open the chicken and found that it was still pink, so I sectioned it and Suzette microwaved it for four minutes.   I did not do the sauce for the chicken which is 3/4 cup of chicken stock with 1 clove of garlic and a Tbsp. of mince parsley reduced to a sauce, which would have been a bit nicer, as I found myself dipping my meat into the residue of cooking juices on the serving dish at the table to coat the meat with sauce.   

We then sat down to dinner and enjoyed a perfect summer meal of parsley mousse stuffed chicken, sautéed squash medley, fresh white and yellow corn with glasses of white Sauvignon Blanc. 

We looked at pictures from our recent trip to England and France and then had slices of the sweet potato pie with whipped cream flavored with vanilla and Grand Marnier and brandy.   At around 10:00 p.m. we walked home stuffed full of food and conversation.  

One of the interesting things about Charles and Susan is they are about my age and they had a similar education from 7^th grade through 12^th grade, which was one of accelerated classes.  Charlie’s were in Houston and mine in Fort Worth, while Susan’s were in American schools in Holland and Saudi Arabia where her Dad worked for Aramco.  So I asked them what their early school experience was like, as part of the conversation.   

For example, we discovered that Charlie’s interest in wood working came from his assisting his Dad in his Dad’s wood working shop, which he inherited, just like my interest in food came from my assisting my mother in her kitchen preparing her menus for her cooking school, whose kitchen equipment I inherited.  

Bon Appétit