November 27 Cheese and Gravad lax and November 29, 2012 Book
Club Meeting food
Last week our new neighbors Doug and Crystal called and
suggested that we get together for a glass of wine on Tuesday evening because
Crystal wanted to get my recipe for gravad lax.
So last Thursday I bought two salmon filets and two packets of dill and
made gravad lax over the weekend.
Gravad lax Recipe per 3 pounds of salmon
Two matched filets of salmon weighing a total of 3 pounds
2/3 cup of Salt
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tsp. of black pepper crushed finely
2 bunches of dill
You mix the salt, sugar and crushed pepper. You put the filets in a dish that just holds
the fish so that the liquid generated by the curing process will cover the fish
to the greatest extent possible. Then
you lay a layer of dill in the bottom of the dish, then coat the outside of the
first filet and lay it in the dish, skin side down. Then you coat the inside of the salmon filet
with a layer of dill and the dry ingredients and do the same for the other filet
(coat both sides with the mixture and lay dill on the top of the skin side out
of the second filet and pour any remaining mixture on the top of the skin and
dill of the second filet and cover dish with saran and put a brick on it to
force the ingredients into contact with the fish. Then I
put the dish in the fridge and turn it once after 12 hours so the fish is cured
a total of 24 hours.
On Saturday Suzette and I went on a shopping excursion,
first to Whole Foods where we bought duck mousse paté and Leyden cheese and then
to Costco where we bought sugar snap peas, butter lettuce, an Irish Cheddar, a small
wheel of French Brie from Normandy, and a California Goat cheese and two loaves
of whole grain bread.
On Tuesday I went to Trader Joe’s and bought 10 bottles of
wine, 2 bottles of Cognac, artichokes, and capers.
Tuesday night Crystal and Doug arrived at 7:00 p.m. with a bottle
of Justin 2007 Isosoceles (88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, and 4 %
Merlot, unfiltered) from Paso Robles located near U.S. Hwy. 101 between Santa
Barbara and Monterrey in Monterrey County and a wedge of lovely French soft Blue
cheese (Mildenbleu?) and a baguette from Whole Foods. I cut thin slices of whole grain bread and we
put out the above described cheeses and the paté and I cut slices of gravad lax
and thinly sliced some small cornichons (Trader Joe’s) because I like a slice
of cornichon on my pate. I then sliced
and toasted slices of baguette and whole grain bread and we sat in the T.V.
room next to the fireplace and talked and ate and drank. After about an hour we had drunk the Justin, so
I went to the basement and brought up a 2007 Londer Vineyards Paraboll and
opened it. Everyone liked its heavier character
that was a good match to the weight and character of the Justin. We also made a salad with the butter lettuce,
palm hearts, roma tomatoes, and PPI string beans and a vinaigrette dressing
made with the Selman’s olive oil from Chile and Suzette’s homemade tarragon
white wine vinegar. By around 10:00 p.m.
we called it a night after lots of lovely cheese and wine and a sliced up fuji
apple for dessert. Doug and Crystal are
both marathoners, so they are very careful about what they eat.
On Wednesday I made myself a plate of PPI turkey and dressing
and cranberry sauce and gravy and ate the PPI salad and went to meditate.
Thursday evening was my Monthly book club meeting. This month was my book selection (Three
Empires on the Nile) and my responsibility to host the group. We had ten of the twelve members in attendance. I put out the same stuff we had eaten on
Tuesday minus the French Bleu cheese and salad. I made a fresh onion dip with dried onion soup
mix and sour cream. I did not have nuts
so I looked in my 1000 Recipe Chinese Cookbook and found two recipes for roasted
nuts. So I added cinnamon, allspice, anise
and ½ cup of sugar to about ½ cup of water in a sauté skillet and boiled 1 lb.
of raw peanuts in the liquid until the liquid greatly reduced. Then I cooked them in a wok with more sugar and
1 Tbsp. of peanut oil and a dash of sesame for a few minutes so they would get
sticky with sugar and oil. Then I salted
and roasted the peanuts in a pie pan and roasted them in the oven for 1 ¼ hours
until the liquid evaporated and the nuts turned golden brown. They had finally dried out and solidified and
Suzette broke up most of the larger clusters.
After a court appearance Tuesday morning I went to Lowe’s and
bought corn and potato chips, a guacamole dip and Jumex juices ($.33/can) and
some bulk items such a banana chips, Japanese rice cracker mix, and sweetened pineapple
chunks ($4.99/lb.). I also put out
cookies and chocolates and pretzels.
Keith Carroll had offered to bring a bottle 2007 Archery Summit Dundee
Hills Pinot Noir (about an $80.00 bottle), so I agreed to open a bottle of
Londer Estate Grown Pinot Noir (about a $35.00 to $40.00 bottle). I also opened a bottle of Trader Joe’ Napa
Valley Semillon ($12.99) white which had a slightly sweet cast to it that several
of the members liked and drank. Most
members drank the reds, so after a while I went to the basement and fetched a
2005 Seco Highlands Pinot Noir which is an upscale Kendall Jackson wine that
Suzette and I bought at the winery in 2008, grown at Kendall Jackson’s Arroyo
Seco vineyard estate in Monterrey County ($20.00). Unfortunately, the Kendall Jackson had oxidized
and was a bit bitter. So two or three
good wines and one stinker.
The Three Empires on The Nile by Dominic Green traces
the history of Egypt from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 to the conquest
of the Mahdi State in Sudan in 1899. The
three empires are the Ottoman Empire that ruled Egypt, the British Empire that
took control over the Egyptian government in the late 1800’s and the Mahdi
State that was formed by a religious zealot named Muhammad Ahmad, very much like
Osama ben Ladin, on the upper Nile centered in Khartoum, that took control of
the upper Nile in 1885 when the Mahdi’s Muslim army of around 100,000 massacred
Charles “Chinese” Gordon and most of the populous of Khartoum that did not convert
on the spot to Islam and held control of most of the upper Nile for about fifteen
years. Finally in 1898 the British and
Egyptian forces under command of General Kitchener armed with British Maxim
machine guns, which fired 480 rounds per minute, killed 11,000 and dispersed the
remaining 52,000 strong Mahdi army in five hours near Khartoum.
The reason why I picked this book was because the Ottoman and
British and Mahdi Jihadist revolution in the late 19th century in Sudan
and Egypt’s political interaction with the British and Ottoman Empire is so strikingly
similar to today’s Al Qeada movement and American and NATO involvement in the
Middle East and the Egypt’s Arab Spring and lurch toward some form of Western
European democracy. In fact the Muslim
Brotherhood that rules Egypt now is the direct political descendant of the
Mahdi state of 125 years ago. How
history seems to repeat itself!
Each meeting ends with a dessert, so I served baklava at the end of the meeting.
Bon Appètit
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