Suzette drove to Santa Rosa yesterday and I went to Book
Club, so no dinner was cooked.
Today Mohan Johal came into town, so I went to lunch with
him and Nizar at Monica's El Portal on Rio Grande Blvd. because he wanted to eat Mexican
food at a family style restaurant. When
we walked through the portal (covered patio) and into the converted house, we
were immediately greeted by the owner and told to seat ourselves. We walked into one of a series of connected rooms
and sat down next to a table with an older Hispanic couple were seated, so we
felt right at home.
Our waitress came by to take our drink order and hand us menus.
Mohan wanted to try a local beer and he
ordered a green chili beer. The menu was
extensive but not overly extensive. I usually
try enchiladas at a new restaurant and immediately saw the Lunch Specials in
the lower right corner and that on Fridays the Special was flat chicken enchiladas,
which I love. Mohan loves fajitas, so after
the waitress served our drinks and was ready to take our food order, Mohan ordered
chicken fajitas and Nizar and I chose the chicken enchiladas. I loved it when the waitress told us, “We are
serving the enchiladas with cheese for Lent, if you wish.” I guess one can never be too careful or
courteous even when serving two East Indians, one a Sikh, the other a Muslim and
a Texas Jew boy.
The enchiladas were delicious, not too much cheese with good
sticky rice and thick refried beans and an adequate amount of onions and extra
garnish with red chili sauce. Lovely,
like a well prepared and plated French dish with an appealing mix of
colors.
After lunch we discussed our California property and then at
4:45 p.m. I rode ten miles to Montano into a strong headwind out of the north and an easy return trip.
I did not return home until 6:00 p.m. At 6:30 p.m. Suzette called to tell me she
was just leaving Santa Rosa. So at 7:30
I began chopping up about three cups of Chinese Broccoli, separating the leaves
from the stalks, 4 cloves of garlic, about 1 ½ Tbsp. ginger root, ¼ cup of
onion, and sliced 2 shitake mushrooms for the stir fry.
Suzette arrived a little after 8:00 and announced that she
was too tired to cook, so I took the PPI baked sweet potato and the thawed rib
steak from the fridge. I salted and
peppered the steak and fetched the bag of dried thyme and a bottle of 2009 Pennywise
Pinot Noir (Costco $8.47) from the basement and uncorked the wine.
Then I heated the wok and put 2 Tbsp. of peanut oil in the
wok. When the oil began to smoke I threw in the broccoli stalks, onion, garlic
and ginger and stir fried them until soft.
At the same time I heated about 1 Tbsp. of butter in another large
skillet and threw in 2 halved cloves of garlic and leaves from 3 dried sprigs
of thyme. When the Butter started to sizzle,
I put the steak in. It looked a little
lonely in the skillet with all that space of browned butter around it so I went
to the fridge and found the tub of fresh fava beans we had shucked the other
day and Suzette agreed that it was a good idea to sauté them with the steak and
garlic butter, so I scattered them around the steak in the skillet.
I then put the broccoli leaves and the shitake mushroom
slices into the wok and poured in 2 Tbsp. of Chinese rice cooking wine and a
dash of sesame oil and covered the wok and turned down the heat a bit, so the
vegetables would steam.
I cut the steak into slices and poured the wine and plated
up some slices of steak for each of us.
Suzette sliced the potato into two halves lengthwise and we each took a scoop
of two of broccoli.
Shortly after we took a picture of the dinner plates and sat down to eat, Willy came home and grabbed a plate and we redistributed the fava beans and sweet potato and ate a lovely meal and watched “Idoicracy”.
After dinner I sipped a glass of Calvados and ate a few chocolate covered raisins and then, happily stuffed, went to bed.
Bon Appétit
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