What a fun day of food. I ate my usual granola, milk, blueberries, and yogurt for breakfast.
For lunch I made a Vietnamese Noodle Miso soup with seaweed, pork, pork sausage, spinach, a large T. of red miso, a dash of chicken stock, a tsp. of dehydrated dashi, a pho vegetarian seasoning cube, Chinese Rice wine, sesame oil, and 1 tsp. of parsley I loved the full bodied meat flavor and garnished the soup with thinly sliced green onion.
Then I napped for an hour. At 2:30 I went to the bank and then drove to Sprouts to buy 5 lb. of asparagus at $1.48/lb. for Suzette’s restaurant. I also purchased 2 lb. of asparagus for us, a gallon of milk, blueberries for $1.67/pint, green beans for $1.99/lb., four Aja tuna steaks at $5.99/lb., a Manager’s special on small odd shaped sea scallops for $7.98/lb., and hamburger meat at $3.99/lb. for 85% lean grass fed beef.
I the drove home in time to hear Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show at 4:00 because the market had acted so oddly today. He confirmed that the market was in a rotation and the Fang stocks would be okay, but I had another bad day in the market today that went from positive in the morning to negative in the afternoon. I bought 500 shares of JD.com stock because I read in this week’s Business Week that Walmart was using JD as its fulfillment service provider for fresh groceries in China.
The stock dipped on the open. I bought at about 7:41 after it raced up 79 cents off its low. It kept slowly moving up until the afternoon. By the end of the day I had made 50/cents per share.
At 5:30 I read several Chinese and Japanese cook books and then looked at my favorite, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. On page 218 I found a recipe for Coquille St. Jacques Provençale I liked and decided to cook. Here is the recipe.
I decided to steam Asparagus with the dish, and serve the dish with PPI Bulgar wheat.
Willy arrived at 6:30, so he helped prepare the asparagus and Bulgar and Suzette and I prepared the scallop dish. I minced 1/3 cup of yellow onion, 1 ½ T. of shallot, and 1 clove of garlic and Suzette sautéed that in a skillet with 1 T. of butter. Suzette washed and dried the 1 lb. of scallops and I sliced the scallops into ¼ inch thick slices. Suzette then dusted the scallops in a bag filled with ½ cup of flour and a dash each of salt and pepper and then shuck the excess flour off by placing the dusted scallops pieces in a colander and shaking the scallops.
Then she quickly sautéed the scallops in 2 T. of butter and 1 T. of olive oil for 2 minutes.. Then she added 1 cup of white wine, 1 tsp. of fresh thyme, and 1 bay leaf. After the wine reduced for 1 or 2 minutes and thickened from the absorption of flour she added the onion mixture to create a thickened sauce. We then placed the scallop and onion mixture in a Le Creuset enamel baking dish and Suzette sprinkled the top with about ½ cup of grated Swiss Gruyere cheese and put the dish into the oven set at broil to melt and brown the cheese.
While the scallops were cooking Suzette steamed the asparagus and re-heated the Bulgar in the microwave while Willy set the table and poured glasses of the 2016 Reserve de Chastelles Tavel rose’ wine I had chilled (Julia Child’s wine suggestion was a dry Cotes de Provence rose’, so this wine was close. Tavel is a small village located a few miles northwest of Avignon and directly west of the Rhone River and west of Chateauneuf de Pape in Southern Rhone. The Côtes de Provence region is the next large wine growing region and lies southeast of Avignon on both sides of the Durance River, which joins the Rhone at Avignon, so Tavel is a near neighbor to Côtes de Provence both
geographically and climatically. The wine was dry but with a fruity finish, so very pleasant, a bargain at $8.99 at Trader Joe’s.
These days I am buying more at Trader Joe’s and Costco because I believe they are doing a better job of identifying good wines at fair prices. Total Wine has a greater selection but has a nasty strategy of marking up the prices on inferior wines, so you must be very knowledgeable. For example, at Total Wine a Tavel could be priced at $15.00 per bottle and may be no better than this $8.99 bottle of Tavel at Trader Joe’s. Furthermore, the Total Wine bottle often is a winery direct label that Total Wine controls, so there is often no independent assessment of the quality of the wine. For now I am sticking with Trader Joe’s and Costco primarily for every day wines. I still will go to Total Wine for wines that I want that I can not find anywhere else that are priced competitively, such as the Elk Cove Pinot Gris I bought for Thanksgiving for the same price as the Winery. Buying power does help.
We really liked the Tavel and drank the rest of the bottle with a couple of chocolates after dinner. I also ate the last piece of Chocolate fudge pecan pie from Thanksgiving with a cup of Earl Grey tea and milk later.
I went to bed around 8:45 and Suzette followed shortly after.
How good it feels to cook a wonderful dish from Julia Child’s great cookbook that I have never cooked before. It is like reacquainting oneself with an old friend after a long absence. Likewise, drinking the lovely Tavel rose’ was like meeting a new person who you want to be friends with forever.
Bon Appetit
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