Sometimes PPIs are not as good as the original fresh dish and sometimes they are better. The better PPIs are those that combine several ingredients into a stew or soup that if let to sit for a day will meld their flavors. Both of these PPIs fit that definition.
Upon re-hearing the posole sauce, cheese, red chili and tortillas all melded their flavors into one mass in the PPI enchiladas from Saturday’s lunch at the Shed. I went to the garden and picked lettuce and made a salad with chopped red onion, tomato and lettuce. I also put chopped red onion on the enchiladas when I heated them for a delicious topping of cooked red onion that melded into the enchiladas also. I drank ½ of a Modelo Especial lager.
Dinner was the same melding but in a very different way. We had stored the Mussel and fennel bisque in a yogurt container in the fridge for several days and we re-heated it and served it over re-heated PPI spaghetti. Suzette also toasted pieces of French bread made at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery we took home on May 5.
It was fun to dip the bread into the bisque until it absorbed the soup and then eat the bisque flavored softened bread.
The bisque had benefited from sitting for several days because the herbaceous flavor and aroma of the fresh fennel had melded with the flavor and aroma of the sea that the mussels brought to the dish. The result was a new subtle combination of flavors and aromas that I did not detect in the original bisque. Sometimes time is an ingredient in cooking and understanding its subtle effect is a skill worthy of a good cook.
A day after eating the dinner I still feel or sense the elegant infused Mussel and fennel aroma in my body. This is the height of French cooking. A dish whose flavors and aromas make a deeply penetrating pleasant impact on you. The problem with this approach is a dish such as this is like a good wine. It will be very rough and jangly when freshly made. It takes time for the flavors and aromas of the sea and land to combine. I remember a good example of this. On our first trip together to France twenty years ago we ordered bouillabaisse at a fancy seafood restaurant in Cap Du Antibes. It was inedible for us because the bisque, which was a reduction of fish, herbs, garlic aioli, and wine was overwhelming to our inexperienced taste for French food. But I bet that had we eaten the same soup a day or two later we could have enjoyed it because all those strong flavors would have melded together.
We drank glasses of Famille Perrin Cotes Du Rhone Reserve white with the pasta dish.
Bon Appetit
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