I went by Ta Lin and picked up a 1 lb. piece of salmon for sushi, plus two octopus tentacles and about 2/3 lb. of ahi tuna and a fresh white daikon radish.I also bought a 19 ounce tub ofmedium firm tofu, a small tub of white miso, Japanese eggplants, beautiful shallots, a bottle of saki, baby dill and a 4 ½ lb. chunk of Atlantic farm raised King Salmon for gravid lax.
When Suzette got home, we cut up the octopus, the 1 lb. slice of salmon and the tuna and got out our tube of wasabi in paste form, pickled ginger and tamari soy sauce.Suzette sliced an avocado and then sliced thin pieces of honeydew melon with a cheese slicer, while I peeled and sliced about 1 lb. of the over 1 inch thick daikon into thin half round slices.
We feasted on the sushi and other fresh ingredients and drank cold nigori saki (cloudy white) and watched all the exciting news surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional.
Later, we ate bowls with the last of the clafoutis, topped with chocolate syrup and whipped cream and sipped cognac.
As you can tell from the last two days reviews, in the summer we simplify our recipes and select recipes that cut down on the time spent over a hot stove.Lighter, fresher food is preferred.With the new garden that will increase in time
For example, I am thinking about serving the gravid lax in a salad with an orange/chili dressing instead of the traditional Swedish method of with bread and butter and boiled new potatoes.
I took Luke to the Airport at 11:00 so was close to Vietnam 2000 and in the mood for my favorite summer dish, Bun Cha Gio, which is a bowl filled with strips of fresh cool julienned cucumber, shredded lettuce, mung bean sprouts, basil and cilantro covered with a bed of room warm boiled rice vermicelli and topped with hot meat or vegetarian ingredients of your choice.My other son, Willy, and my favorite topping is a combination of fried pork egg rolls and grilled pork (No. 21, $7.25).I also usually order extra basil and cilantro because I like the fresh herbs.Today, I was interested in an extra lift, so I ordered an iced coffee with condensed milk; a lovely summertime drink.
After lunch when I arrived home I called Suzette and we decided to thaw out a steak for dinner.
Upon Suzette’s arrival at she was hungry so we decided to cook a quick one dish dinner.
Creamed Beef with Mushrooms on Penna
1 lb. rib eye steak, sliced into ½ inch wide slices
1 cup Penna pasta (dry)
5 large white mushrooms
3 Tbsp. yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
30 ounces of stock (guinea fowl)
30 ounces of water
buerre marie (2 Tbsp. butter and 2 Tbsp of flour, blended into a paste)
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Suzette thawed the steak in the microwave and I sliced the steak and chopped the onion and cut about 1 lb. of broccoli flowerets off of their stalk, while she sliced about five large white mushrooms.
We poured the 30 ounces of stock into a large pot and added an equal amount of water and boiled the pasta until soft (about fifteen minutes).While the pasta was boiling, Suzette sautéed the onion and mashed the garlic in a garlic press in a skillet and sautéed them at medium heat until softened and then added the meat and mushrooms.While the meat and pasta was cooking Suzette made a buerre marie (2 Tbsp. butter and 2 Tbsp of flour, blended into a paste) and I steamed the broccoli flowerets.
After the meat and pasta was cooked, Suzette added the buerre marie to the skillet and cooked it for a minute or two. Then we gradually added about two cups of the stock from the pasta pot and made a cream sauce.There was about 30 ounces of stock/pasta water left in the pasta pot, so I put it back into the container and refrigerated it for another meal.
We put a pile of the cooked penna in a pasta bowl and ladled the thickened creamed beef and mushroom mixture over it and put five or six flowerets of the steamed broccoli on the side of that pile in the bowl for a very attractive and delicious pasta dinner.
We opened a bottle of 2009 Round Pond Estate bottled Cabernet Sauvignon from Rutherford, CA.
I ate three chocolate truffles later with a glass of cognac and read about the chateaus of the LoireValley in France.
June 26, 2012 Luke’s Dinner Party – Grilled Salmon and Spelt Salad
Luke invited four friends for dinner (two Sarah Lawrence friends, Sarah and Marjorie, and two old Albuquerque friends).We spoke in the afternoon and I went by Costco and picked up a filet of Steelhead salmon ($6.99/lb) and 2 lb. box of cherry tomatoes.
When I arrived home Suzette had not yet arrived so I got to cook the Salmon.We did not have a cedar board, so I brushed the Salmon with oil and drizzled lemon on it.Luke had boiled spelt and made a salad by adding chopped cucumbers and crumbed ricotta salata cheese and some basil.He had bought a head of red leaf lettuce at La Montanita Coop. I sliced a handful of the cherry tomatoes in half and we piled the spelt salad on leaves of lettuce and garnished the salad with tomatoes and laid a slice of cooked salmon on each plate.We ate in the garden and had a lively conversation while we drank a New Zealand and a Kenwood Sauvignon Blanc.
For dessert, we ate Clafoutis (Cherry custard) with small glasses of Spanish Paxaran (infused juniper berry liquor).
June 23, 2012 Lunch – Taj Mahal,Dinner – Pork Fried Rice with Cucumber, Onion, Tomato, Avocado and Mango Salad
I met my son, Luke, at Taj Mahal for lunch.It was great as always.I was hungry so I ate a slice ofNan (wheat bread baked in a clay oven), with some rice and a yellow squash and potato curry, Saag Paneer (Greens cooked with spices and Indian cheese), and tandoori chicken (chicken marinated over night in yogurt and tandoori spices) and then baked in the clay oven) garnished with fresh onions and cold riata (a yogurt sauce flavored with spices and cucumber and potato).
To my taste, Taj Mahal has the best Saag Paneer in Albuquerque.It does not have intense spiciness, but it seems very authentic with lots of well cooked greens and garlic and cilantro and little chili.
I called Suzette in the afternoon to tell her that I did not have any food ideas for dinner, but we decided to thaw out a couple of chops from the freezer.I thawed out two pork chops.When Suzette got home I was still in a conversation with a client and still not very hungry for dinner but Suzette was so she went to the fridge and got out some cooked rice on which I had poured the rest of the teriyaki sauce from the teriyaki salmon dinner last week.Then she made an egg pancake in the wok and then made fried rice by sautéing the teriyaki rice with the egg, while she sautéed the pork chops.We served the pork chop with the fried rice and some Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Salad with balsamic and olive oil from last night’s meal to which we added a chopped avocado and a chopped mango.The salad/salsa mixture turned out to be quite interesting with the pork and sweet teriyaki rice.
We drank a California Pinot Grigio.I like California Pinot Grigio because it has a little more earthiness than many Italian ones.
June 22, 2012Breakfast – Ham and mushroom and green onion and cheddar cheese OmeletDinner – Sausages and corn and cucumber, tomato and onion salad
I made a three egg omelet with the above ingredients plus a clove of fresh garlic, two scallions chopped finely and a handful of fresh kale from the garden.We ate it in the garden with a glass of dry Proseco.Lovely.
During the day I made a salad with
2 fresh roma tomatoes, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
1 clove of fresh garlic, minced
4 Tbsp. of onion, minced
1 Tbsp of Balsamic Vinegar and
2 Tbsp of olive oil
Also, I boiled two artichokes (Sunflower Market $1.25 each) for about two hours, which made their flesh extremely tender.I have usually cooked artichokes for about 1 hour and I can tell you that they improve with more cooking, if you do not like al dente artichoke.I made a simple
Artichoke dipping sauce:
½ cup Kraft Mayonnaise
juice of ½ lemon
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. of dried dill
Optional: dash of Worstershire Sauce
This is my simple standard artichoke dipping sauce.
For dinner we had no strong direction and were hungry so we ate one of the artichokes and then
I boiled 2 ears of white corn and two Hot Italian Pork Sausages, in a pot filled with water deep enough to allow the corn and sausages to float, that I had bought at Sunflower Market on Thursday.After boiling the sausages, I sautéed them in olive oil for about ten minutes to brown them and fully cook them,We served the sausages on a plate with the a bed of fresh romaine lettuce from the garden garnished with a couple of scoops ofthe cucumber, tomato and onion salad and drank a beer.Very simple and light and I slept all night.
June 23, 2012 Food to Field Food event at Center for Ageless Living
I had to pour wine so I arrived at and set up the wine pouring table. There was also a tented area for serving food and a tented area for eating. I started pouring immediately because people has already arrived even though the official start time was 7:00 p.m. About 100 people showed up.The meal is always all local, all fresh, ingredients and products meaning that everything must be raised or produced within 100 miles of the center. This year's theme was "Escape the Ordinary" and featured garlic and garlic scapes (the bloom that is produced early in the spring).
The wines included Milagro Winery’s 2009 Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.Casa Rodeño’s Meritage, Cabernet Franc, Viogenier and a lovely Spanish style blend with Tempranillo.There was also Gruet Brut champagne and Chenin Blanc.
I missed the appetizers because I was pouring but everyone liked the beef sliders and three kinds of roasted garlic cloves;some of which were served with champagne in the new ¾ acre certified organic garden.
As dinner was served, I left Betty to the pouring and got in line with Amy Jackson, my ex-wife, for dinner.The best dish in my opinion was the vegetarian lasagna made with fresh mozzarella from Old Windmill Dairies.The lasagna was actually a recipe Suzette and her friend, Debbie, and I first encountered in Intra, Italy on Lake Maggiore, which was made with spinach and some form of tallegio and baked in an olive oil bathed cassarole.Since then we have experimented with the dish and the most successful form has been the one we make with fresh kale from our garden layered with sliced baby portabella mushrooms and whatever else we have, like artichoke hearts and ricotta and mozzarella cheese and topped with parmesan cheese.The Bistro staff added roasted red bell peppers and garlic scapes.The trick is to put lots of liquid in the lasagna so it will not dry out when it bakes, because it will absorb lots of liquid.I think the Bistro recipe was made with a liquid we have used a lot, a vegetable broth made with mushrooms and a mirapoix.Everyone loved the lasagna.
There was also lamb stew with fresh carrots we had purchased at the Farmers’ Market in Albuquerque Saturday morning.In addition, there was garlic roasted chicken and two salads, one of garden greens (some of which were bought at the Farmers’ Market that morning) and fresh peas topped with goat’s milk chevré that was wonderful and the other, a caprese style salad fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basis, onions and more gat milk chevré from Old Windmill Dairy. For dessert, Marie Paul made her wonderful Belgium waffles as she has been doing since the Brussels World Fair in 1958.
Suzette and the garlic people spoke about the Center and garlic.The garlic people are in our Slow Food group and cultivate over 330 types of garlic.They described themselves as preserving as many strains of garlic as possible and they have one of the largest collections of growing garlic in the U.S.
I drank Gruet Chenin Blanc most of the night.I started doing research for our trip to France on Sunday and was pleased to learn that my favorite wine region in France, Savenniers, greatest wines are all Chenin Blanc.I can hardly wait to drink the real thing with the real food in France.
Thursday evening was a “To the Trade” wine tasting.These were not the best wines but wines that were of exceptional quality for the price.I tasted lots of really good $7 to $8.00 wines.Some were better like Anne Amie Oregon Willamette Vaelley Yamhill District Pinot Noir, but the emphasis was on price.Many importers were discounting their wines.
As I walked around the ball room at the Hilton (now Crown Royale) Hotel, I had a déjà vu image of being approached in the market in Marrakesh by a drug dealer saying, “I have good shit, Do you want to try some?” Everyone was super friendly and trying to get us to try their wine.
June 22,
We went to the Grand Tasting on Friday evening with the intent to pick up bottles for Suzette’s walkway at the new organic garden, but we had to try some of the wine and food first.My favorite dish was the last one I tried from Nob Hill Diner.It was a duck confit taco served with fresh cilantro and a jalapeno and habanero infused orange juice sauce. There was elk tenderloin garnished with sautéed Jerusalem artichokes and a lovely shrimp smothered in a kale and greens sautéed in vinaigrette sauce.There were over 100 wines, so I lost track of the best ones.My favorite again was the Anne Amie Oregon Pinot Noir.
