March 13, 2013 Shopping –Sprouts; Dinner – Corvina Sauteed in
garlic butter and onions with Spinach Couscous
I went to Sprouts today and bought over $33.00 of stuff,
including organic Green cabbage for $.19/lb., a 1 lb. filet of fresh corvina
(Sea Bass) for $7.99/lb., Tofu for $.99/14 oz., beautiful fresh crop asparagus
for $1.99/lb., four red bell peppers for $.33/lb., a large eggplant for $1.25, green
seedless grapes for $.99/lb., two lamb chops for $3.99/lb. and four freshly
made pork sausages for $2.99/lb.
When Suzette arrived home we went for a ride on the tandem
to Rio Bravo. While I was showering she
must have looked through the fridge, because when I returned to the TV room at around
5:15 she said, “There is lots of new food.”
I said, “Yes, did you see the fresh corvina?” We discussed
the different items and possible dishes and tried to remember how the corvina was
served on the beach in Panama City two years ago. Finally, we decided to make a fruit salsa and sauté
the fish in garlic butter with onions and prepare a spinach couscous.
So I sliced open four avocados and they were all badly
blackened and looked diseased, so we threw them out, as we did the last of a
papaya that had gone moldy. That left us
with kiwi berries and mangos and I made a salsa using two of each and the juice
of one Mexican lime. Suzette judged the darkened
PPI mango and avocado salsa from dinner two nights ago inedible, so we left it
out.
I then sliced a quarter onion and two cloves of garlic into thin
slices for the fish.
Prep and dinner was interrupted several times to take calls
from Willy who started driving to Vancouver this morning to be the guest of
honor at a party for him this weekend. Suzette
and he discussed possible motel choices in different cities, as he drove and
she scanned the internet.
When the salsa was ready, I went to the kitchen to make the
couscous. I heated 1 ½ cups of water in
a 4 quart pot and added 1 minced shallot and 1 Tbsp. of butter and ¼ tsp. of
salt and brought it to a boil. When the
liquid came to a boil I added 1 cup of chopped spinach and 1 cup of couscous
and reduced the heat and simmered it for five minutes covered.
When I pulled the cousous off the heat Suzette took over the
cooking of the corvina and I went to the basement fridge and fetched a bottle
of Muscadet and a bottle of Sancerre and offered them to Suzette to decide
which to drink with dinner. She chose
the 2011 Laurent Reverdy Sancerre (Appellation Sancerre Contrólle from Verdigny,
$12.99 at Trader Joe’s) We had decided
that it would only take about two minutes to cook the 1 lb. corvina filet, so as
soon as I had uncorked the Sancerre and poured it, dinner was ready to plate up. Suzette served the corvina with its garlic
and onion butter sauce over a pile of couscous and we each added scoops of salsa
at the table for a very fresh and tropical dinner. The corvina was cooked to perfection. It was tender and juicy with the garlic and
onion butter mixing with its flaky slightly oily fresh texture, which moistened
the slightly dry couscous.
The Sancerre was superb also, elegantly clean with a slightly
grassy flavor and bouquet, reminiscent of a sunny late summer field of tall
grass; clearly the best thirteen dollar bottle of wine I have bought at Trader
Joe’s.
I thought but did not
say that the wine was a little austere for the heavy oily fish dish. I would have liked the wine better with a more
elegant dish, like crab or shrimp in a garlic cream or newburg sauce.
I ate some of the green seedless grapes for dessert but they
had an odd chemical taste and were not sweet.
We then left the table to watch the last of “Innerspace”, a
1987 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Martin Short, Dennis Quaid and
Meg Ryan (who were all perky and young, as we all were 25 years ago) and at
Suzette’s request I went to fetch a bottle of cognac and poured us a glass and
ate a few chocolate wafer cookies and chocolate covered raisins to get the
chemical taste out of my mouth.
Bon Appétit
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