June 4, 2013 Lamb Chops, Sautéed Pasta with fried mushrooms, and lemon squash

Rarely do we create a new dish, but tonight was one of those fabulous nights of food creativity.

We had planned on making Chinese Garlic Eggplant with octopus, but Roland Dominguez came by and I became occupied with restarting my TV and talking to him, so did not get a chance to go to the store to buy an eggplant as I had planned.

When Suzette came home at 6:30 p.m. and bringing home the other HMDI cable we bought at Costco on Sunday and connecting it to the TV, which created 1080 pixilation and fixed the TV, I apologized and said I would go to the store to get an eggplant.  She responded by saying. “We have the PPI lamb chops and the PPI pasta and pesto sauce.  Then I said, “We have some Mexican Squash and I love lemon flavored squash with lamb.”

Suzette responded, “Perfect, we have a menu.” 

So I quartered lengthwise, four Mexican squashes and then cut the quarters into slices and then chopped a large shallot and about 2 Tbsp. of garlic scapes and Suzette sautéed those two ingredients for a few minutes and then added the squash and sautéed that until tender and then I squeezed the juice of 1/2 lemon to the squash and cooked it a bit more to incorporate the lemon flavor into the squash.  Here is a picture taken during the cooking process.

Suzette then asked if we had any mushrooms and I said, “We have both the baby portabellas and the new container of shitakes I bought yesterday at Ta Lin.”

Suzette said, “Give me the shitakes,” which I did.  She said the shitakes were lovely and commenced to slice two or three and put them into a large skillet with heated oil.  She sautéed the mushrooms at high heat for a few minutes until their edges went from soft to firm and took on a slightly fried texture.   See how the mushrooms are taking on color.

 

 

Then she added the PPI fresh pasta, that had only been rolled once and was thicker than usual and sautéed that with the mushrooms until the pasta also became firm on the edges and started to take on color like the mushrooms.

When the edges of the pasta started to become firm and the mushrooms had taken on color on their edges, Suzette added a few spoonsful of the scape pesto we had made at Debbie’s house on Saturday evening and I started heating the lamb chops in the microwave and ran to the basement to fetch a bottle of La Granja Rioja (50% Tempranillo and 50% Granache Trader Joe’s $4.99).  

When the lamb chops were ready we plated up the squash, pasta and lamb chops and poured glasses of wine and had a fabulous spring lamb meal, and felt like we were in Spain or Italy.

The texture of the pasta was terrific.  Because it was fresh pasta and thick it tasted like fried potatoes; crisp on the edge and soft in the middle with no apparent sauce but impregnated with the garlic sauce that gave the pasta a pebbly surface with just a hint of garlic and even better tasting when mixed with the slices of fried mushroom that were browned on the edge but soft in the middle also.   I cannot explain how exciting it is to create a new dish.  Often it occurs on nights like this when we have no set menu or we abandon our planned menu and create a menu using our PPI’s, as we did tonight.   

At 10:00 p.m. after being dazzled by our newly improved TV for hours, I was ready to go to bed but took a few minutes to remove the gravad lax from the curing liquid and wash it off and wrap it in plastic wrap. Gravad is the Swedish word that describes the method of curing in salt and sugar that we used to make the salmon.  lax is the Swedish word for salmon.  Gravad is not pickling which uses brine made with water and salt and herbs, but is this specific method used to cure salmon with only salt and sugar that creates an exchange of sugar and salt for the fat and liquids in the fish.

Bon Appétit