I woke up early to go to Santa Fe and ate the PPI ½ of the Chirashi from yesterday’s lunch with Peter Eller at Azuma.
Martin and I drove to Santa Fe and mediated until noon when we went to Ying Yang for lunch. YY serves the best Chinese Buffet that I know of in Santa Fe and is centrally located across the street from the new courthouse at the Design Center on Cerillos.
The reason I like YY is because it serves dishes I like that are more traditionally Chinese with quality ingredients for $8.95 for lunch, which seems to be a fair price. We arrived at 12:15 and the restaurant was already full and many offerings depleted. The restaurant seems to start with full containers of a dish and refills them as they run out but not always fully. For example, my first pass I found two green lipped mussels in a black bean sauce. It was a great dish so when I went back a few minutes later to refill I found only three mussels, which led me to believe they did not fully refill the trays in some cases. I guess it is a form of enforced portion control. There were four or five other dishes I thought were really delicious, including stir fried chunks of deep fried tofu with vegetables like slices of button mushrooms in a brown sauce, an amazing Mandarin Chicken with vegetables; the chicken was white from being marinated in cornstarch and stir fried in a light white chicken sauce with cabbage and carrots; and deep fried shrimp paddies made by shelling all but the tail of a shrimp, slicing it to butterfly it and then pressing it flat into a paddy, breaking it, and deep frying it. Of all the ways I have eaten fried shrimp, this my favorite. There were also more standard offerings th. There were also more standard offerings that were less exciting to me like BBQ pork ribs and General Tso deep fried chicken with it spicy and sweet sauce and twice cooked pork with vegetables that were all of good quality and preparation. I was also able to dredge up some tofu and egg clouds from the remaining hot and sour soup that I added a little egg drop soup to to reduce its pungency and was struck by the recollection that YY makes one of the most authentic Hot and Sour Soups because it flavors the soup with Chinese vinegar.
We were also served good strong fresh Oolong tea. I recommend Yin Yang to anyone who loved Chinese buffets. It is the real deal, not an Americanized imitation that uses cheap ingredients in bland combinations.
I arrived home a little after 5:00 and there was no real dinner plan. Suzette did not want to cook, so I went to the fridge. I had bought a bag of spinach and a box of portobello mushrooms at Costco on Monday when I filled the mini with gas. I found two pieces of smoked salmon in the fridge that had been smoked by Chef Kelly at the Greenhouse Bistro left from Christmas, so I decided to make a smoked salmon omelet. Suzette fetched the last of the round of aged goat cheese that her brother Jeff and his wife, Kathy, sent us for Christmas. So I chopped up 2 oz. of onion, a 1/3 lb. piece of smoked salmon, 2 cloves of garlic, sliced the oz. or two of goat cheese, chopped about ¼ cup of kitchen dill, sliced two large white mushrooms, and whipped four egg. We made the omelet by sautéing the onions, garlic and mushroom slices, then added the dill and egg, then arranged slices of salmon and cheese over the surface of the egg, cooked the omelet until almost done, then Suzette flipped one side onto the other and cooked the omelet until done. It was a big omelet. I ate my entire ½ to get as much protein as possible but Suzette only ate ½ of her half, so I ate her other half for breakfast on Wednesday with three pieces of toast, one with Nutella, one spread with peanut butter and honey and the third with butter and slices of Petit Basque cheese.
I spent the morning working with Roland, Ioana, and Aaron on our Romanian wine venture making multiple calls to Romania.
We finished a letter of intent by 11:30 and decided to go to Taj Mahal for lunch. Taj Mahal was as pleasant as always, we were greeted with Happy New Year by our favorite waiter and Samiz. The food was reliably good with really good tandoori chicken and culcha and always great saag paneer. I loved it and we had a lively discussion about the various ways the Russians could be spying on and compromising Trump, after the release of the report by MI6 that the Russians have compromising information on him. Ioana was really animated because she grew up in Romania when it was under the control of Russia and was familiar with Russia’s techniques of gathering and using information and propaganda.
I did not get to the store today so I asked Suzette to bring home a roasted chicken from the Greenhouse Bistro. Suzette suggested sautéing zucchini and yellow squash, so I fetched the zucchini squash from the fridge in the garage and a couple of lemons and Suzette found a yellow squash which she sliced up while I sliced about 2 oz. of red onion. Suzette sautéed the red onion and chopped squashes in utter and olive oil and then I added a large handful of spinach.
We drank the last of the La Granja Spanish white blend of Viura and Verdejo grapes (Trader Joe’s $4.99) and then opened a bottle of Famille Perrin Reserve white Cotes du Rhone.
The chicken was deliciously roasted and complemented by the sautéed vegetables.
Bon Appetit
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