Tonight’s meal was created in an impromptu moment out of PPI. Suzette and I had decided that she would
bring home a roasted chicken from the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery, but when
Suzette arrives she had no chicken, because the Bistro had sold out of
chickens. We had thawed out a chayote
and tomato sauce from the freezer and Suzette saw that the small avocados I had
bought last Thursday at Pro’s Market (5 for $.99) were ripe and ready to
use. So we changed the menu to Fried
Avocados with something in the Chayote sauce.
When I suggested that we had scallops, Suzette agreed and also to using some
of the fresh PPI tomatillo sauce in the fridge.
So off we went.
 |
| Scallops sauteeing in tomatillo/squash stew |
Then I snapped the stalks of about 14 stalks of asparagus
and put them into the steamer and went to the basement for two Noche Buenas
(Costco now sells 24 packs of Dos Equis Amber and Pilsner and Noche Buena beer
for $16.99) and heated the PPI tomato flavored cous cous in the microwave for a
couple of minutes (We had boiled rice, which is what would have been served in Mexico, but I thought the tomato flavored cous cous would complement the dish better and taste more like Spanish rice).
Suzette steamed the asparagus and when the asparagus was
ready, we plated each dish with two fried avocado halves filled with crema, a
pile of the steamed asparagus stalks, cous cous and then the scallop stew on
the cous cous.
The dish was interesting.
The sauce had a creamy texture and the chayote sauce had slices of Mexican
squash and tomatos in it but the constituent ingredients had lost their
individual flavors and had merged into a kind of creamy vegetable stew,
especially when it merged with the pureed tomatillo sauce. What was good was that the scallops and sauce
complemented each other, so that when one cut the scallops into pieces and ate
a piece of scallop with the stew, they took on a stew-like texture and flavor
and lost their individual character. I
had never thought to make a Guiso de Vieira but we had just made it. A new dish for us. The only thing we did not do was add lots of
chilis to make it more of a diablo style of stew that is so common in Mexico.
The avocados were not our creation. We first had them at El Farol in Santa Fe and
then at the El Farol restaurant in Albuquerque when it existed. El Farol fills their fried avocados with pico
de gallo, but we used Mexican crema (Pro’s Ranch Market $1.99/lb.). The avocados needed a little chili zip in my
opinion, so I fetched the bottle of Cholulu original hot sauce and drizzled a
few drops on the crema and avocado, which did the trick to heighten the picante
flavor sufficiently for me.
We loved drinking the Noche Buena beers with dinner. It made us feel like we were in Mexico, because
Noche Buena is exactly the beer we would have choosen for this dinner; especially
since Moctezuma only makes Noche Buena in the winter.
From a non-event (the missing chicken), we had conjured and created a fun
dinner with a new dish.
After dinner we watched the last episode of season three of Downton
Abbey that we had missed last Sunday and ate chocolate covered almonds and Suzette
sipped cognac and I sipped Trimbach plum brandy and then retired to bed full
and happy.
Bon Appétit
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