Monday, December 30, 2013

December 28, 2013 Brunch – Ham, Mushroom, avocado and cheese omelet Dinner – La Boca

December 28, 2013 Brunch – Ham, Mushroom, avocado and cheese omelet   Dinner – La Boca

We had a leisurely morning packing up luminaras.  At around 10:00 we decided to have an omelet, so I took out all the ingredients I thought would be great together: sliced cooked ham, 2 Tbsps. of onion, an avocado, some shredded jack cheese and several mushrooms and sliced them into small cubes and then I mixed the two egg whites in the fridge with three eggs.  I then snapped three sprigs of oregano from our indoor plant and six or seven stalks of chives and chopped them finely.  After I had sautéed the ham, onion, avocado and mushrooms, I poured the eggs whipped with a whisk over those ingredients in the large skillet.  After a minute I placed the shredded cheese and half of the oregano and chives on top of the omelet.  After about five minutes when the eggs had stiffened I folded one-half of the omelet over onto the other half and reduced the heat because Suzette was on the phone.  I put a puddle of the fresh tomatillo sauce that Suzette had made last weekend on each of two plates.

 

I toasted a roll and heated water for tea and when Suzette was finished I garnished the of the omelet with fresh oregano and chives and served the omelet with the roll and cherry preserves.  Viola! It was lovely and full of goodies.  I decided to use a similar ingredients on Sunday evening to make quiche and invite the Palmers over for dinner.
We had been discussing whether to go to Santa Fe, and at around 11:00 we finally decided to go because we wanted to see the Renaissance to Goya Spanish drawings exhibit at the Fine Arts Museum.

We first went to Stephens Consignment and when we told the man who helped us look at three teak bar stools that we were interested in indoor bar stools for our new kitchen remodel, he said that he sent most of the furniture items to their other store called the Consignment Warehouse?and suggested that we visit it.  So we drove out Cerrillos to Richards and then to Ruffino  and found the store.  It had several interesting items and a lovely selection.  There were actually two fabric covered Italian bar stools ($75.00 each) that we liked and we bought them and put them in the car and drove to the Museum.  When we got into the exhibit we saw Michele and Ed Houston and invited them to join us at La Boca for dinner at 5:30 p.m.  I did not like the drawing show very much because much of it was cartoons for murals in churches in the Baroque style, kind of like going to see fifty churches. Yuck.  There were several lovely drawings that were genre compositions and cartoons for portraits of Saints and Cardinals that were finished drawings without the grids drawn on them.  The drawings were masterfully drawn with good technique and lots of grey and white gouache to delineate the curves and shadows of cloth. 
When we were buying our tickets at the Fine Arts Museum I had asked the cashier what exhibit was at the O’Keefe Museum and he said a Lake George Exhibit, so after meeting Ed and Michele and seeing all of the Spanish show and the six O’Keefes at the Fine Arts Museum, we decided to go to the O’Keefe and see the Lake George show because it was a little after 4:00 p.m.   We loved the Lake George exhibit, especially the magenta and purple leaves that we had never seen before.  I especially liked a scene of Lake George covered in layers of fog that had that imperceptible foreground and background so common to symbolist paintings like Roerich’s .

After the O’Keefe, we walked to La Boca and arrived at 4:40 p.m.  Luckily, the tapas special menu is served from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00, so we were in time to take advantage of the Tapas Menu, which means that everything was half-price.  We ordered a bottle of red 2009 Ergo Tempranillo from Rioja for $26.00 and six tapas on the menu ($5.00 and 6.00 each), because we expected Ed and Michele to join us at 5:30 and we wanted to make sure that they tasted the tapas.  The first two tapas brought out were a trio of small square ramekins and a side of grilled yogurt flat bread slices and a plate of kale salad garnished with olive oil fried garbanzo beans and garlic cloves and lightly dressed with a lemon vinaigrette.  The ramekins were filled with a harissa carrot hummus, one with beet puree garnished with a dab of goat’s cheese, and my favorite one with white bean and artichoke puree, After a while our waitress brought us out two small paella pans, one filled with fried cubes of chorizo sausage and potatoes and the other filled with morcilla (blood sausage), chorizo sausage, and fried cubes of potato and toped with a over easy fried egg.   I loved the flavor of the morcilla and the egg made a lovely sauce with the hot olive oil.  We ate some of the sausage and potato and egg tapas and left some for Ed and Michele, but at around 5:45 we realized that they would probably not make it, so we took another glass of wine and realized that we had a large meal of tapas to consume.  When the Seasonal tapas menu was placed on the table, we realized that we would not be able to even think about eating any of those lovely tapas. 
Finally, we were brought two more tapas, Patatas Bravas (long wedges of fried potatoes covered with a spicy sherry vinegar sauce and roasted garlic aioli) and a pork tenderloin skewer (Pincho de Puerco) lightly grilled so that the inside was still pink, just the way I like it, on a plate with a smear of apricot honey puree. garnished with slices of briny green Manzanilla olives.  By this time we were really stuffed and we barely managed to finish the pork tenderloin because it was so delicious and about half of the potatoes.  By about 6:45 we were really stuffed and when our waitress asked us if we wanted a dessert, Suzette could only collectively laugh.

 


 


 



 

 

We made it home by around 8:30 p.m. happy and full of Spanish art and tapas.
Bon Appétit and Salud

No comments:

Post a Comment