October 5, 2012 Breakfast – Crenshaw melon, blueberries, granola, and Mango yogurt, Lunch – Dinner Chirashi at Japanese Kitchen “The Best”, Dinner – Roasted Chicken and kale and tomato Couscous

October 5, 2012 Breakfast – Crenshaw melon, blueberries, granola, and Mango yogurt, Lunch – Dinner Chirashi at Japanese Kitchen “The Best”, Dinner – Roasted Chicken and kale and tomato Couscous

 Food consumption can be so quixotic. Today Breakfast and Lunch were better than dinner and dinner was met my usual high standard.

For breakfast I sliced about a two inch wide slice of fresh Crenshaw melon from our garden and scooped out the seeds to make a shallow bowl into which I placed fresh blueberries and a small pile of granola.  I then poured a healthy dollop of LaLa mango yogurt over the pile and squeezed a bit of fresh lemon juice over the whole affair.  This made a messy chaotic but delicious breakfast dish.

I called Bob Mueller, a fellow lawyer who loves sushi more than I do and who is a real expert on the subject, about a case and he suggested lunch at his favorite sushi restaurant, The Japanese Kitchen, located at 6521 Americas Parkway in Albuquerque’s Uptown area.  The Sushi Bar is located in a separate space from the steakhouse with its teppan grills that is serenely quiet in contrast to the excitement and noise of the steakhouse.  Bob suggested that we sit at the counter and walked us over to sit in front of the main sushi chef, an older Japanese man.  I ordered the lunch chirashi that was priced at $18.00 and Bob looked at me and said, “I always order the dinner chirashi.  So I said, “Then I will have the dinner chirashi also.”

After about fifteen or twenty minutes we were each handed two round about 7 or 8 inch wide chirashi bowls stacked on top of each other.  When I took mine apart I saw that one was covered with vinegared sushi rice on which were two small dollops of sea urchin roe (uni), a slice of sauced BBQ’d eel (unagi), a small pile of umeboshi Japanese plum pickles, a surf clam and a small pile of orange salmon roe. 

The other box contained an inverted teacup surrounded by ice cubes and covered with a thick layer of shredded daikon. On top of the daikon were multiple layers of thick slices of raw fish and seafood (sashimi): 3 tuna (maguro), 4 salmon, 4 yellow tail, 2 mackeral, 1 conch, 1 white tuna, 2 slices of octopus, a slice of squid rolled around a dollop of flying fish roe and a bit of Japanese mint leave into a small cylinder, 2 large slices of egg omelet cooked with sweet soy, 1 slice of abalone, 1 flavored shrimp, 1 slice of giant sea clam perhaps, 1 slice of fresh conch that had been crisscross sliced to relieve some of its fibrous tension, a  Japanese mint leave (shiso) and several other fish and seafood items I did not notice but ate heartily. In other words, an extravagant assortment of fresh seafood.  Bob drank saki and we both drank hot green tea.  It took me over 1 ½ hours to eat all of the food and I did not leave a morsel in either bowl.  One of Bob’s comments was that for whatever reason we see very little sea urchin roe from Japan any more.  It mostly comes from California.  Bob said that when it used to come from Japan he would ask for complete silence when he ate the dollops of sea urchin roe so he could completely savor its salty creamy flavor.  I can say without reservation that Japanese Kitchen on this day was the best sushi in Albuquerque. 

One proviso, this is the first day of the International Balloon Fiesta and that means that there are more tourists from all around the world in Albuquerque than at any other time of the year and if you were catering to sophisticated tourists from all over the world you would want all their favorite delicacies.  Another point worth mentioning is the Japanese Kitchen is probably the oldest and most famous Japanese Restaurant in Albuquerque, having been in business for about 20 years. 

I was beginning to feel like being a foreign tourist eating my way through France or New York City with gourmet food at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Suzette arrived home at around 5:30 with a large warm Herbs de Valencia whole roasted chicken.  At 6:00 p.m. I ran to the garden and cut about a pound of leaves of kale and about twenty small red and yellow cherry tomatoes.  While watching the PBS “News Hour”, I sliced the stems out of the kale leaves and chopped them into bite sized pieces and halved the cherry tomatoes while Suzette started a large 3 or 4 quart aluminum pan with 1 ½ cups of water boiling.  I threw in about 1 ½ Tbsp. of butter and when the water came to a boil Suzette threw in 1 heaping cup of couscous.  Then we immediately threw in the pile of kale and tomatoes.  When we checked the pot after about 5 minutes there appeared to be too little water, so I added about 2Tbsp. more water, so the couscous would beg soft and the kale steam and reduced the heat to keep it from sticking on the bottom of the pan.

I then cut the thigh and leg quarters off the chicken and heat them in the microwave oven uncovered.

When the chicken was heated, Suzette fluffed the couscous and kale and the kale wilted a bit into the couscous.  I ran to the basement and fetched a bottle of Concannon Sauvignon Blanc and we served ourselves the chicken and couscous.  The chicken and couscous was hot and delicious and the steamed kale was particularly pleasant layered among the tomatoes and fluffy couscous.  Unfortunately, the wine had gone bad due to oxidation and it was undrinkable and it ruined the dinner.  The lesson here is to not allow a spoiled wine ruin your dinner.  We were not so concerned.  Suzette and I stopped drinking wine after the first glass, but we had had a mojito cocktail during the news and we were well liquefied, and did not feel the need to get another bottle even though it greatly affected the effect of the food.

Bon Appétit