September 29, 2012  Lunch – Rasoi Indian Restaurant;  Dinner – Sautéed Pork, potatoes and kale

I had a snack of bread coated with blueberry jam and slices of Leyden cheese around 10:00 while perusing .  Then I rode 10 miles and then watched Tottenham beat Manchester City at Manchester for the first time in 23 years with Willy.  After the game I suggested to Willy that we look at bikes at a garage sale down the street to see if he wanted a new bike.  We went down the street and looks at a group of bikes that had been refurbished, but most of them were road racing bikes and Willy really wants a street/commuter bike that he can ride around town on, so when I asked if he had tried riding the two other bikes we had at home, he said yes but they did not hold air.  It was around 1:30 p.m., so I suggested that we take Luke’s old bike to the bike shop and see if we could get the tire fixed on it and then get some lunch.  We took it to the Bike Coop on Yale and they installed a new thorn resistant tube on the front rim and filled it with liquid latex fluid.

As we were taking the bike back to the truck, I noticed a new Indian Restaurant for which I had seen advertised  in the IQ that morning named Rasoi located at 110 Yale SE on the north side of the parking lot in which we had parked to go to the Bike Coop.   So I asked Willy if he might be up for Indian food instead of our intended Vietnamese lunch and he said yes, so I drove across the parking lot to Rasoi.

When we entered the restaurant proved to be much more spacious than I thought it would be and it had a downstairs area also, as if it had been a converted home.   I asked if they were serving a lunch buffet and was told, “yes.”  I then asked if we could look at the buffet and again was told “yes.”  So Willy and I looked at the buffet and I immediately saw several items that were intriguing such as Goat Curry and Saag Paneer with real cheese and a dish I had never seen before, pakora curry, so Willy and I decided to try the buffet.   I took my usual Saag on  rice with a thigh of tandoori chicken which was smothered with sautéed onions and a bowl of dhal and a bowl of riata.  Willy took the pakora curry and potato and squash curry and chicken dish with cream curry sauce.   I immediately noticed a difference with the food from that which I usually find in Albuquerque.  This food seemed to be more complex and cooked more, so that the spices melded together with the ingredients.  For example, the tandoori chicken seemed to have a more complex spice and yogurt marinade or to have been marinated longer and the caramelized onions were a great touch that gave the chicken a more subtle flavor.  The dhal was not just the watery soup one usually finds but a thick richly seasoned stew of three or four kinds of beans, including red beans and garam. Like the difference between posole that has been cooked for only about four hours and posole that has been cooked for three days.   Little things that made a difference.

I tasted Willy’s chicken dish and it seemed to have a brighter spice complex than other chicken dishes of its kind and I agreed with him that the pakora curry was not very flavorful.  I finished my meal with a bowl of rice pudding and again was impressed with the complexity of flavors.  To complete the favorable response to Rasoi, while we were eating at around 2:15 a group of four Indians walked in and sat at a table near us and ordered off the menu.   We left before their food arrived, but not before seeing three flaming braziers brought to their table.  So there is both breath and complexity in the menu at Rosai.

As we were paying I noticed the wine cabinet and saw that it had a wide and interesting selection of wines.   Alas a new, wonderful Indian restaurant in Albuquerque.

When Suzette arrived home at around 4:00 p.m. Willy had decided to take a ride up the bike trail on the newly fixed bike and so Suzette and I decided to rest for a few minutes; she in the bed and I on the couch watching football and talking to a client.  At around 5:00 she got up and I suggested that we watch the McLaughlin Report at 5:30 p.m. and then cook dinner.  She looked at the TV schedule and saw the “Book of Eli” was going to be shown starting at 6:00. We asked Willy if it was a good movie and he said, “Yes,”  so we had a plan.  During McLaughlin Suzette and I discussed dinner.   We had originally planned on chicken with couscous with kale and tomatoes.  Suzette brought home fresh tomatoes and peppers from her Los Lunas gardens, but had not brought home a chicken, so we came to the decision to sauté sliced pork and tomatoes and potatoes and kale utilizing the PPI pork and saurkraut.   So at 8:30 p.m. when the “Book of Eli” ended we started cooking.  I went to the garden and picked kale and we de-stemmed it and chopped it roughly.  Then Suzette sliced the pork and sautéed it with some of the PPI roasted potatoes I had made with the pork and sauerkraut and then added the kale and covered the large skillet so the kale would wilt.  I went to the basement for a bottle of Ferme Julien rosé.   The wine was not perfect with the dish, but no wine would have been perfect, because the pork still had a bit of the vinegary flavor of the sauerkraut.  But the wine was refreshingly cool and fruity and the pork, potato, garlic and kale combination was very filling and satisfying.

We decided to not eat dessert or drink the entire bottle of wine to moderate our intake of food and wine.  Are we finally on a diet or had we each eaten large enough lunches to lighten up on dinner?

Bon Appétit