January 22, 2015
Lunch, La Salita Dinner, New
Recipe Salmon Two ways with Mixed Pasta
in a Spinach, cranberry and onion cream sauce
Mike called a bit before noon and invited me to meet
him and Kathryn at La Salita for lunch.
I enjoyed seeing them and we made some tentative plans to visit them in
Paris in May and have a dinner of aged beef next Monday evening.
I enjoyed my Lite Bite (1) Swiss cheese stuffed chile relleno with
beans on a bed of stewed turkey.
After lunch I drove to Sprouts Farm Market to pick
up some items. There was a sale on Fresh
farm raised salmon, so I bought a 1.1 lb. piece and then some mushrooms for a mushroom
sauce for Monday evening and then some white potatoes to mash with garlic. String beans were on sale for $.99/lb. so I bought
some of them and spinach ($.99/bunch) looked great so I bought spinach and an
eggplant ($1.25) land Roma Tomatoes ($.50/lb.)in case we wanted to make
tomatoes Provencal. Finally I saw that
dark chocolate coated cherries were on sale for $5.99/lb. so I bought some of
them also.
Suzette came home hungry, so I opened a package of
Shallot and onion Boursin and crackers and heated Vya for a warm drink of
vermouth with it as an appetizer and we discussed dinner.
Suzette suggested pasta with a cream sauce with
spinach and cranberries to accompany the salmon. When she opened the salmon she noticed that
there was a pronounced thick side and a long thin side, as I had been careful
to buy a front belly-sided filet.
Suzette suggested that we fry the thin skinny part and poach the thick
sided part separately. I did not understand
exactly what she meant but I agreed and she began to cook and I went to the
basement for a bottle of wine. I decided
to chill a bottle of 2010 Leese- Fitch Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc.
Suzette started a large pot filled with water to a
boil and when it boiled added both egg noodles and Italian gemelli macaroni and
cooked the pasta while she fixed the fish entrée course.
New Recipe - Salmon two ways:
Suzette melted butter in a large skillet and I
chopped ½ onion and the crushed four cloves of garlic into the butter in the
skillet and added the onion. After that sautéed
for a couple of minutes she added about 1/3 cup of Sauvignon Blanc and 1/3 cup of
water to make a poaching medium and added the thick portions of the filet and ¼
cup of dried cranberries and then covered the skillet to poach the salmon.
Then Suzette sliced the thin side into thin slices
and placed them skin side down in about ¼ inch of heated oil to fry them crisp
and then removed them to a paper towel to de-grease..
When the thick fish fillets had poached for about
ten minutes Suzette added about 1 cup of cleaned and de-stemmed spinach leaves
to the skillet and covered it again to steam the spinach in the poaching
medium. Then she finished the dish by
adding about ¼ cup of cream to make a thin cream sauce.
I fetched wine glasses and poured the Sauvignon Blanc and moved the
table in front of the fire place so we could be warmed by a fire as we ate
dinner. The salmon two way dish was a
success because the two different textures of fresh salmon were delicious and
especially nice with the fresh spinach in a cream sauce. This is not my favorite form of cream sauce. My favorite cream sauce is
béchamel, but I find that Suzette prefers making a cream reduction because it is quicker and does not
require another pot and two other steps, which has its advantages, especially after a long
day of work. Also, since Suzette likes cranberries
with salmon, the thinner reduction cream sauce lets the cranberries express their flavor a bit
more.
Leese-Fitch is a good clean Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc with lots of dry
fruit flavor, like a tart apple, and not much of the citrus flavor found in a
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc so the wine helps cut through the fat in cream
sauces and fish with lots of oil like salmon.
For dessert we ate a few dark chocolate covered cherries.
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