March 24, 2013 Greek Dinner Party, Southwest Chocolate and Coffee Festival and Breakfast - French toast and Bacon

March 24, 2013 Greek Dinner Party, Southwest Chocolate and Coffee Festival and Breakfast - French toast and Bacon

Suzette left early to remodel the restaurant at the Center for Ageless Living.  After watching the morning news shows, I made French toast and a rasher of bacon for brunch.

Then when Suzette returned we went to the Southwest Chocolate and Coffee Festival at the State Fair Manuel Lujan Building to support Armando Martinez, the pastry Chef for the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery in the cookie and candy competition.  We arrived just before the competition and after saying hello to Armando I saw that most of the seats in front of the stage were taken so I took a seat on the far end of the front row and waited about twenty minutes for the judging to start.  Suzette had bought a small child’s play safe and some gold wrapped chocolate coins and Armando had made a pile of decadent fudge bars and brushed them with gold leaf powder to make them look like they were gold. 

 

The competition was sponsored by the Southwest Milk Association limited to 20 entrants.  As I learned later from Betty? Chavez, the baker for Tecolote and a teacher at Santa Fe Community College, who had won the cake category last year, there was also a cake category with twenty entrants.  

Sitting on the front row turned out to be a blessing because after the presentation of entries to the judges the remaining cookies and candies were passed around the audience and we were sitting on the front row and were served the cookies and candy first in many cases.  Many of the entries were very good.  These were people who knew something about baking.  I did not try all entries, but my favorite cookie was a chocolate chip cookie with pistachio nuts and dried cherries, because the cherries held the cookie together in a gooey sort of way.  The only real competition for Armando in the candy competition was the Troy’s wife of Joliesse’s Chocolates, the French trained chocolatier, who made a fabulous thin tempered chocolate bar dipped in a fruit glaze and filled with a soft fondant filling (Joliesse's entry is just in front of Armando's in the picture above partially hidden by Suzette's arm). Their shop next to Vernon’s Steakhouse on 4^th street will be a wonderful new addition to the chocolate shops in Albuquerque.  After the judging we walked around and said hi to Debbie at the Candy Lady, who gave me a white chocolate covered slice of candied orange.  Finally after lots of coffee and candy and cookies we left and went home.

At 5:00 we gathered up the lamb chops, a bottle of Hungarian Furmint Tokaj, eggplant, Swiss Gruyere cheese, panko and Roma tomatoes and asparagus and went to Cynthia and Ricardo’s to cook and eat a Greek Dinner.  

When we arrived Mike had already arrived and the three were eating shrimp in caper sauce with fresh Tzatziki (yogurt and olive oil and dill sauce) and olives with French champagne.  We immediately sat down and joined them.  When the champagne was finished we opened the furmint and kept eating, while Cynthia rubbed the lamb chops with paprika and I constructed the eggplants Provencal.  The Furmint had a steely grey taste.  It was like a dry Riesling that has had all the sugar fermented out of it.  It would have been a little better if it had had a bit of residual sugar to balance the vinegar in the capers, but it had a compelling flavor that was very welcome.  Ricardo loved it and I liked it.

Eggplant Provencal

I sliced two American black eggplants into about 3/4 inch thick slices.

I then brushed each side of the eggplant slices with olive oil (Sleman’s from Chile given to us by Ed and Michele last Christmas) and laid the eggplant slices on the baking pan

I then sliced four Roma tomatoes into ¼ inch slices and put them on the eggplant.

Then I sliced Swiss Gruyere cheese and covered each slice of tomato with slices of cheese. 

Cynthia put some dried oregano into a small freezer bag and I put about three or four handfuls of panko into the bag and shuck up the bag and crushed the panko a bit to make the crumbs fin and then sprinkled bread crumbs on the top of the cheese.

After drizzling a small amount of olive oil on the top of each of the eggplant slices, we put the baking pan with the constructed eggplant Provencal into a 375˚ oven for about thirty five minutes or until the eggplant slices were soft to the touch and the cheese melted.

Cynthia had made a lovely fresh spinach, red onion cucumber salad and a wonderful baking dish filled with a kopia made with phyllo parboiled leeks and eggs. 

While Mike and Ricardo were grilling the lamb chops, Cynthia snapped the asparagus and put them in a skillet with some water and we heated the skillet to a high heat and covered it to steam the asparagus.  I asked Cynthia if she wanted to flavor the asparagus with an herb and she suggested that she had some fresh dill she had left over from the Tzatziki.  So we de-stemmed the dill and I chopped up the dill and when the asparagus were soft, Cynthia drained the asparagus and I sautéed the asparagus with a drizzle of Sleman’s Olive Oil and the dill.  The Sleman’s olive oil is so clean it does not add any flavor of olive oil to the food.  It is unique in the fact that is so pure and clean that it has no inherent flavor of its own, just a hint of texture and its constituent elements, like a very fresh oyster or Dom Pérignon Champagne.  Good olive oil provides a cooking medium without adding any extra oily taste, so the asparagus tasted like freshly cooked asparagus glistening with olive oil and the eggplant Provencal tasted like a beautifully baked little cake of eggplant, cheese, tomato and bread crumbs.  It is there but it is not.

We put the food on the table and after a couple more minutes I fetched the eggplants and plated them and served one or two to each person.  Mike brought a bottle of Campo Viejo Reserva Rioja red wine and a bottle of Antinori super Tuscan red that were both excellent red wines and delicious with the meal.  We enjoyed a lively and often hilarious conversation about how we each got along with our ex-spouses and Cynthia’s trip to Greece, where she obviously obtained a love for Greek food.

 

Then Cynthia brought a bowl of fresh sliced strawberries to the table with a pint of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream and a pint of Haagen  Dazs raspberry sherbet with a bag of Pepperidge Farm Verona cookies filled with raspberry and apricot jam and Ricardo fetched a bottle of Zonin Prosecco and poured each of us a glass.  After dessert Cynthia fetched a bottle of Taos Distillery Bourbon, which I had never had before and we had shots of it (it was a delicious sipping whiskey)

After a fun evening of Greek food and wine and sharing ex-spouse stories, we went home at around 9:30 p.m. and fell asleep immediately.  Days of exceptional food are always wonderful and hectic.

Bon Appétit