I ate fruit salad with granola and yogurt for breakfast again.
At 10:30 I made a quick Fried rice with chicken and chopped Bok Choy and an egg and the PPI Bobby Flay chicken and rice and Fried Tofu and steamed rice.
At 11:00 I drove to Ranch Market to purchase the ingredients for the Shed Red Sauce and Chocolate Mocha Cake. When I saw large cans of Hominy on sale for $2.99 I could not resist the urge to make Posole so we could mimic my favorite dish at the Shed, No. 5, Blue Corn Enchiladas with double Posole. I then went to the meat department, which is huge at Ranch Market and bought 3.5 lb. of pork Posole blend, which is end cuts of various kinds of pork plus split feet and neck bones. I had a meeting with Aaron at 12:30, so as soon as I returned home I sliced ¾ of a large onion, chopped five or six cloves of garlic, and threw that into a large pot to sauté with a handful of Mexican Oregano.
As the meat Sautéed I butchered it to remove tendons and fat and get it to bite sized pieces. When Aaron arrived I added the Posole and covered it with water. This took me about ½ hour, which is the quickest it has ever taken me to make Posole thanks to the pre-cooked hominy and the ore-cut Posole blend.
When Suzette came home we made crab Louis salads with the PPI greens we had picked in the garden yesterday , plus some extra romaine lettuce, the remaining 1/3 cucumber, the remaining 4 or 5 radishes, a tomato, and I made a quick Louis Sauce dressing with mayo, catsup, lemon juice, a dash of salt, and sweet pickle relish.
We halved and peeled the two avocados I bought at Sprouts and Suzette filed the halves with the crab claw meat I had bought at Sprouts ($12.99/lb.).
We drank a bottle of wonderful Romainian dry Riesling that Aaron gave me that was a pleasant blend of fruit and minerality.
After dinner we worked together to make first the red chili sauce and finally, the chocolate mocha cake. I love making both dishes because they are such clever recipes. The reason they seem clever to me is because they are both clever adaptations of classic French recipes to make local dishes. For example, the red chile is really a Béchamel sauce made with a roux with the addition of garlic, emulsified with tomato juice and flavored with ground red chile; simple and quick.
The chocolate cake is not much more difficult. It is a chocolate mousse or more appropriately a simple Hollandaise Family egg yolk sauce made by melting 12 oz. of bittersweet chocolate chips with 2 T. of coffee, 2. T. of sugar, 2 T. of water, and when that mixture is smooth adding 7 egg yolks off the heat and then whipping the 7 egg whites until stiff and folding them into the egg yolk mixture with the addition of 1 t. of vanilla extract.
Here are the two recipes.
I was jazzed to have my brother and his family visiting and from the cooking adventure, so I stayed up until midnight watching Charlie Rose, who had Hwa, the former Prime Minister of Hong Kong, and Mohamed el Erian, Chief economist for Allianz Ins. Co. and author of the recent book, “When Worlds Collide”. Hwa gave a very hopeful perspective on China and El Erian gave a very clear warning of what needs to be done to save the U. S. Economy from collapse.
Bon Appetit
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