September 23, 2016 Lunch – coffee Bar and Café at 8th and Mountain Rd. Dinner – Grilled Rib Steak, Potage and steamed green beans
Peter Eller arrived at my door at precisely 12:30, the time he had designated for our lunch. He recommended a new café at Mountain Rd. at 8th, which turned out to be the old gas station next to the Warson’s house that has been converted into a coffee shop and café serving breakfast and lunch.
When I entered the brightly tiled space, probably tiled with Stefan’s Santa Fe Tile tiles, I felt comfortable. The menu was on the board. Breakfast was served at lunch, but I saw a Reuben Sandwich with corned beef from among the six of seven Lunch sandwich choices and chose it with water. Peter chose the Turkey and green chili sandwich and a latte.
We sat at a table by the counter with a view of the kitchen and talked to Jacob, who was the owner, cook and sole employee. Peter commented that Jacob had recently bought the café from the original owner and was a good cook.
Another customer came in and ordered biscuit and gravy and a coffee and I was able to see Jacob heat a nice green chili and cheese biscuit in a small glass bowl in the microwave and add gravy to it.
Then Jacob started on our sandwiches. He spread a pinkish dressing on bread, added sauerkraut and meat and prodded the sandwiches in a sandwich press. Each of our sandwiches was served with a mojo Cole slaw made with either the Goya sour orange juice or lime juice. Jacob made the sauerkraut and Cole slaw, which were very good and the corned beef. The problem was the corned beef, which was shredded roast beef that had been seasoned with pickling herbs and spices. I saw a bay leaf,a coriander seed and a pepper corn in the shredded beef. The problem was exposed when Peter asked, “Where is the pink stuff you served yesterday?” Two things became apparent. That Peter had gone to test the restaurant yesterday and that the restaurant had run,out of the usual corned beef yesterday and Jacob has hurriedly made a substitute corned beef by shredding and seasoning overnight some regular roast beef. What I ate in my sandwich had no resemblance to traditional corned beef. It tasted okay as seasoned roast beef though, so I suggested to Jacob that shredded roast beef was what was used to make Machaca and he could make a credible Huevos Mexicana with Machaca Burrito with it. Jacob seemed dazed by my discovery of his attempt to create an ersatz corned beef and did not seem to grasp my suggestion to alter his menu to accommodate the newly created ingredient. He also did not understand the cultural implication when I asked him, “Where is the slice of dill pickle?
Although Peter did, because my question launched a discussion about the wonderful breads baked by the now departed NY baker who used to own ABC Bakery. Peter was kind enough to buy me lunch and I gave him a couple of the walnut/chocolate chip cookies when we returned home. Peter appears to be walking better after his recent operation and has bought a cute little BMW sports car.
I had an appointment from 3:00 to 4:30 and then changed to my biking clothes, but was buffeted by strong winds that forced me back into the house when outside.
I decided to thaw a rib steak and make potato and leek soup for dinner and use the green beans I had bought for the last two weeks at Sprouts.
I fetched the three leeks from the garage and found Julia Child’s recipe in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking and entered that comfort zone I love to be in, cooking a Julia Child recipe, as I have done for the last 50 years.
The recipe was easy. Four cups of chopped leeks, four cups of peeled and sliced potatoes and 1 T. of salt simmered for 50 minutes in 2 quarts of water. Then purée the cooked ingredients and add 4 to 6 T. of cream and garnish with chopped parsley and or chives.
There was a little problem with adapting the recipe because the amount of leeks was actually 8 cups, so I put in 6 cups of potatoes and 2 ½ or 3 quarts of water. I got a little confused. The result was a more liquids soup than usual, which meant that I needed to cook it more to reduce it, but I failed to do that because I kept a lid on the pot to speed up the cooking. I went to Lowe’s and bought a pint of heavy cream. Suzette arrived around six after I assembled the dish and declared the soup too liquids and flavorless. She added the rest of the pint of cream and the a cup of crema and I must admit that the soup tasted better and had thickened slightly with her addition. I had snapped the green beans, so Suzette took over and blanched the green beans in a Saran covered bread baking dish in the microwave, which preserved their tensile texture better than blanching in boiling water and grilled the steak. I forgot to slice an onion for grilled onions in the fuss over the soup because I had to keep stirring it to try to thicken it.
Suzette brought in the orange pimiento and two shishito peppers she found in the raised beds and sautéed them in butter in a skillet and then added the steak to flavor it and coat it with the flavored butter sauce. While Suzette was cooking the steak I went to the garden and picked seven,or eight stalks of chives and minced them and then de-stemmed and minced six or seven stalks of fresh Italian parsley to garnish the soup. I then open a bottle of Chateau Sorillon Bordeaux Superior and poured us glasses. Suzette grilled the steak perfectly for my taste, between medium rare and medium. I loved bites of it with bits of buttery orange or green peppers. I also liked the soup, which has finally expelled it watery texture and flavor. Suzette had already planned a fix for the soup. “We will roast the delicata squash and add it to the soup.” One of the things I love about our cooking is that neither of us lack for imagination when it comes to creating new dishes, although Suzette usually takes the lead.
Willy arrived at around 7:30 and ate a bowl of soup and described his presentation for Friday on the ranking of traffic impacted roadways in the metro area for us as we watched the demonstrations in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Donald Trump does not seem to realize that his suggested solution to the demonstrations created by all the police shootings of unarmed black men of “Stop and Frisk” will ignite a race war like we experienced in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. He simply does not get it.
After dinner we nibbled chocolate chip cookies and I drank a cup of chai.
Bon Appetit
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