May 21, 2014 Lunch La Salita Dinner- PPI grilled chicken with couscous with tomato and chard and brandied strawberry shortcake

May 21, 2014 Lunch  La Salita  Dinner- PPI grilled chicken with couscous with tomato and chard and brandied strawberry shortcake

I met Mike for lunch at la Salita and ordered my new favorite, a chili relleno filled with Swiss cheese garnished with green chili and served on a bed of stewed turkey meat with a double order of refried beans and lots of lettuce, tomato and onions.  It is now my favorite chili relleno.

Mike is leaving for Milwaukee tomorrow and then back to Paris, so he wanted one last hit of New Mexican food.  He ordered his usual, a turkey meat stuffed sopapilla garnished with green chili.

I was not hungry until around 8:00 and since Suzette is in Santa Fe at a conference, I decided to eat all PPIs.

I saw four avocados that needed to be used because they were rapidly getting too soft, so I made guacamole with onion, tomato, cilantro, lots of lime juice, some chopped stalk of garlic greens from the garden and a pinch of salt.

For the entree, I decided to eat the PPI couscous from Sunday that had been cooked with tomatoes and chard with grilled chicken.

 

To refresh the couscous, I picked some more chard and chopped up a bit of tomato and added those new ingredients to the couscous.

Then I heated the grilled leg quarter with the couscous and served it with a dollop of guacamole.  I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2009 Antonini Ceresa Grillo di Sicilia and drank a glass with dinner.  The Grillo’s golden hearty, heavily tannic body cut through the slightly leaden flavor of the PPI chicken and couscous and guacamole.

After dinner and watching the LA Kings stage an amazing third period 6-2 come back victory over the Chicago Blackhawks, I decided to make a dessert and use up some PPI fruits.  I took a shortcake shell and filled it with Suzette’s PPI rhubarb/strawberry compote and then doused the shortcake with cognac and added a scoop of vanilla ice cream (Dreyer's Slow Churned Vanilla) and some fresh blueberries.  Then I finally found the PPI brandied strawberries I made last week that were now beautifully brandied with the cognac and Grande Marnier I added to sliced strawberries and they were still fresh and firm.  I think this dessert would be better with Greek yogurt, so next time I will make it with Greek style yogurt.

Dessert was the flavor winner today.  How can anything doused with two applications of cognac be anything else.  The dessert reminded me of Italian restaurants I have visited with desserts made with liquor soaked cake and fruit fillings or an English brandied fruit trifle with ice cream instead of whipped cream.  I loved it as I asked myself, "how many portions of fruit am I eating"?

Bon Appétit