I went to Anatolia for lunch and had the daily
special of Chicken Tawa, a chicken stew made with green chili, chicken served
on a bed of rice with succotash and a green salad and yogurt sauce. The dish was delicious with tender pieces of
chicken that had been stewed until all the liquid cooked out of the stew,
leaving only the moist meat.
We decided to eat as much of what we had at home as possible,
but since I had bought pork steak, fresh corn, vine ripened tomatoes, red bell
peppers, and broccoli at Sprouts yesterday, we decided to make a pork and broccoli
stir fry.
Before Suzette arrived at home I stripped the husk
from the three ears of corn. When she
arrived Suzette started water boiling in a large pot and I chopped a 1 lb. pork
steak and one head of broccoli flowerets into large chunks. Then Suzette squeezed some Hoisin sauce on
the pork and let it sit for a few minutes while I chopped about three Tbsp. of
garlic and garlic greens, ½ onion, about 1 Tbsp. of fresh ginger, three shitake
mushrooms, and ¼ cup of red bell pepper.
We heated a wok with some peanut oil and stir fried the onion and bell pepper
and put the broccoli flowerets into the boiling water with the corn to blanch. Then we added the meat to the wok with about
1 tsp. of sesame oil and 1 Tbsp. of soy and 1 Tbsp. of rice cooking wine and cooked
that mixture until the meat was cooked (about fifteen minutes) and then added
the garlic, ginger, mushrooms, and the blanched broccoli and stir fried that until
it was all cooked. Suzette had sliced
one of the tomatoes and placed that on a plate.
When the stir fry was ready we placed it on the plate with the tomato and
the corn and opened Sessions lagers and watched the news until Charlie Palmer
called to remind me that tonight was Last Thursday Book Club and he was sitting
outside waiting to pick me up. I had had
a bad result in Court today and completely forgot about Book Club.
I jumped up and grabbed a shirt and the baking dish
of chocolate fudge and ran to the car. It was 6:45 and I had promised to meet
him at his house at 6:30. As it turned
out we were the first to arrive at Ron Bousek’s house at 6:55, a whole five minutes ahead of its 7:00 p.m.
designated starting time.
This month’s book was Cannery Row by John
Steinbeck, which got amazingly favorable reviews and turned out to be one of
the Club’s all-time favorite books.
Ron had a picked some items for appetizers that had
a relationship to the seafood industry described in the book, like sardines in tomato sauce and smoked
clams. Cannery Row packed mostly sardines and squid. His choice of wines included an Estancia Pinot
Noir from Monterrey County, also grown in the area where the book was set. It was fun to eat and drink the products of
that area while we talked about the book.
Bon Appétit
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