February 18, 2013 ***Dinner – Grilled Lamb Chops, Eggplant Provencal,
Bulghar Wheat risotto, and Sugar Snap Peas
I asked Suzette what she wanted to eat for dinner this
morning and she said, “The fresh lamb chops.”
So at 5:00 p.m. I decided to use the eggplant we had bought
last Sunday at Sprouts Market and make my Mother’s best eggplant dish, which she
had called “Eggplant Provencal”. I also
wanted a different type of starch so chose to use up the last of a bag of No. 4
Bulghar wheat (Istanbul Market $1.49/lb.) and make it my favorite way: sautéed in
butter with onions, garlic, raisins and almonds. Suzette had also mentioned that we needed to
use up the last of the sugar snap peas.
So we had created a menu with a slightly Middle Eastern feel to it.
We took a short nap from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. and then I
started by mincing 3 Tbsp. of red onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 ½ handfuls of
roasted salted almonds (Sprouts $3.99/lb.) and about 1/3 lb. of bulghar wheat. I sautéed those ingredients in 1 ½ Tbsp. of
butter until they took on a golden brown color.
Then I added about ¼ cup of raisins and filled the mixture with hot
water to a level of 1½ times the volume of the solid mixture and covered the
pan and lowered the heat to a low simmer and cooked the bulghar like rice for
30 minutes.
I then sliced the about 1 1/2 /lb. American eggplant crosswise
into ¾ inch thick round slices and laid the slices on a cookie sheet. I then opened a bottle of Trader Joe’s Extra
Virgin California Estate “New Harvest” 100% Arbequina cold pressed unfiltered olive
oil ($5.99 for 500 ml.) that I had bought at Trader Joe’s last week and poured
the olive oil onto the slices of eggplant and spread that which did not sink in
immediately with a brush to try to coat the entire surface of both sides of the
eggplant. I then sliced a tomato and put
a slice of tomato onto each oiled slice of eggplant and then covered the tomato
with thin slices of Mozzarella cheese and then panko. Suzette put the eggplant into a 325-350˚ oven
for twenty to twenty-five minutes. Near the end of the cooking time, when the
bulghar and sugar snap peas were cooked and the lamb chops grilled, I turned up
the heat to slightly more than 350˚ to make sure the cheese melted and the dish
was cooked thoroughly (Suzette thinks the eggplant dish tasted better with
thirty to thirty-five minutes of baking because it was crisper and better
integrated when the boys arrived after it had been put back in to the oven for
an additional period of cooking, see below.
Suzette then heated up the propane grill and slathered the
lamb chops with the lovely crabapple glaze she made from our crabapples last
year and salted and peppered them and grilled them to perfection on the grill
to medium rare.
I fetched the peach basil compote Suzette had made last year
with peaches from Ed’s trees in Los Lunas and fresh basil from our garden and
the bottle of mint jelly from the fridge.
We then de-stemmed the last two cups of sugar snap peas that
were starting to get a little old and tossed them into the steamer and steamed
them for 8 to 10 minutes.
I had a tough time deciding which wine to use for the
dinner. I initially wanted to use the new
Chateauneuf de Pape that I had bought at Trader Joe’s last week ($18.99) but it
was a 2011, so clearly not ready to drink.
I finally settled on a bottle of 2008 Handley Cellars’ 14.5% North Coast
“Ranch House Red” that we had bought at Handley last May for about $8.50. It is their artisanal blend of mostly Pinot
Noir and had that lovely soft Anderson Valley California texture to it and since
it was a blend, not unlike a Chateauneuf de Pape, with a bit of age on it and
having benefited from being cellared for over six months.
Suzette yelled that the food was ready so I ran upstairs and
Suzette opened the bottle. We were a
little surprised when we saw that the bottom of the cork had a lot of solidified
tannic acid hanging from the cork, but when we poured the wine it was clear
without any sediment.
The dinner was great.
It was the first time the night air was warm enough to allow for
grilling comfortably. This is the start
of Spring, as far as I am concerned.
In fact, we started
watering the lawn yesterday. Soon we
will start getting the yard ready for summer and the beds ready for planting
the new seeds Suzette ordered. We even
spent a little time with Willy in the garden yesterday and removed the netting covering
the pond and disassembled the fallen gazebo, so it can be repaired.
As we were starting to eat Willy called and said that he and
Eli were thinking about getting something to eat. I encouraged him to bring Eli to our house
for dinner, because I knew that Eli is a vegetarian and I think the Eggplant Provencal
is one of the very best vegetarian dishes, and a perfect vegetarian meal with
the bulghar wheat risotto and a fresh green vegetable.
This was one of those meals in which each of the elements was
so flavorful on its own and yet complementary to the other elements, that the meal
was totally satisfying; completely unlike last night’s meal at the Bull Ring in
Santa Fe, where it was impossible to put together a complete meal for a
reasonable price. Suzette said she liked
the new olive oil. Olives are picked in
the late fall in the northern temperate zone, so if the olive oil was from the
new crop it was picked only a couple of months ago, probably in October or November
Suzette put the Eggplant Provencal back into the oven to
keep it warm and soft and when Willy and Eli arrived they took plates of food. Willy’s with two chops and Eli’s with no chop
but extra sugar snap peas.
I think Willy and Eli liked the dishes because they each
took seconds, so I got boastful and told the guys that I thought the dinner was
the best vegetarian dinner available in New Mexico this evening, because I
believed it and Suzette agreed.
Later Drew came over but did not eat. After we retired to bed around 9:00 p.m. Willy
baked chocolate chip cookies from the dough he had stored in the fridge, as I discovered
when I returned to the kitchen to make a hot cup of tea a little later. The guys graciously gave me the last two
cookies, which made a perfect finish to the meal with the hot cup of cardamom flavored
black tea (Istanbul Market).
What a great evening of cooking and eating!
Bon Appétit
No comments:
Post a Comment