This evening we had my old college roommate, Mike Runnels and
his friend, Mary Ford, over for dinner.
But let me start in the morning. When we walked out to the garden around 7:30 am, Suzette
said she wanted to pull the leeks one of the six beds in the old garden so she could
plant new plants, so we harvested three or four clumps of leeks and decided to
make Vichyssoise for dinner. I processed
the leeks into about three cups of thin slices and then diced one yellow onion,
which when combined with the leeks equaled about 4 ½ cups.
I then peeled and diced four or five potatoes until I had about 4 1/2
cups of diced potatoes. Then I made 6
cups of chicken stock using Knorr chicken stock base. These ingredients completely filled a 6 ½ quart enameled
casserole. I added couple of dashes of
salt and put it on the stove to simmer for an hour and then into the fridge to
chill.
Then around 9:00 am, I went to Trader Joe’s and bought organic heavy
cream, a baguette, artichokes and replenished our wine and cognac. When Suzette came home around 1:30 p.m. we
rode to Rio Bravo and took showers and then she added cream to the soup
and ran the soup through the Cuisinart to break up the lumps. When the soup was served at dinner it was
still a little lumpy, which tasted okay to me because I like it with more
texture. I asked her why it was lumpy
and she said, “Because it did not have enough stock.” I knew she was right because the recipe
(Julia Child – Mastering the Art of French Cooking calls for 4 ½ cups of
stock to 3 cups each of onion plus leeks and potatoes and I had almost 5 cups of each,
so the six cups of stock I put in should have been 7 cups and I should have
used a larger pot. Alas.
Suzette wanted to
have appetizers in the garden and eat on the patio. So she set up the tables. We decided to reduce the amount of food, by
eliminating the pinto beans and adding greens from the garden to the
calabacitas to make a single dish that combined both starches and greens. I said I could make mushrooms or a Béarnaise
Sauce and she said that sounded nice.
But, I decided to wait until Mike and Mary arrived to ask them what they
would prefer with the steak. I went to
the garden and picked a basket full of kale leaves while Suzette set the
tables. I then de-stemmed the kale and cut
it into about three cups of bite size pieces and put them into a colander and rinsed
them with water and let them stand at the ready. We
poured the PPI calabacitas and corn into a sauce pan and put it on the stove at
the ready also.
We decided to freshen up and extend the Crab and Shrimp salad by adding
avocado, so Suzette put the last 1 ½ cups of PPI imitation crab salad into a
lotus bowl and put Mike’s corn chips in another bowl and I finely diced two
avocados and added them to the salad and our first two courses were ready.
Mike and Mary arrived at 5:30 and we decided to have the
appetizer in the garden with a bottle of white wine. Suzette went to the basement and
returned with a bottle of 2011 MacMurray Ranch Russian River Valley Pinot Gris
from Sonoma County. We opened it and
tasted it. It was a little syrupy or had an extended strong character at the
side of the mouth to me. Everyone
else liked it and it was a strong wine, so went well with the fish/shrimp and avocado
in mayonnaise sauce and the greasy Mexican style corn chips.
After we had gotten to know each other better in the garden
and eaten the dip and chips, I asked Mike and Mary whether they wanted sautéed mushrooms
or a Béarnaise Sauce with their steak and Mary immediately responded that she
would love a Béarnaise Sauce. So we went
back to the kitchen and I started fetching ingredients and asked Suzette to
separate three egg yolks and get two sticks of butter from the fridge. I chopped about 2 ½ Tbsps. of shallot and went
to the garden and plucked four or five sprigs of tarragon and poured a little
more than ¼ cup of white wine vinegar into an enameled sauce pan followed by a bit
more than ¼ cup of the MacMurray Pinot Gris and finely chopped the 3 ½ Tbsps. of
tarragon and put two Tbsp. of tarragon in the sauce pan with the wine vinegar
and wine and shallots and a dash of salt and white pepper and fired up the
burner. After the liquid had reduced by 2/3
I turned off the heat and let the sauce base cool. I went
to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2010 Chateau de Retout Haut-Médoc Cru
Bourgeois (one of Total Wine’s self-imported labels, $10.99) and opened it to let it breath. It was delicious,
silky smooth and a dark claret color made with 84.4% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15.6%
Merlot, a classic Bordeaux blend. The all-important bottom of the back label indicated that it
was a certified Cru Bourgeois and “Mis en bouteille au chateau” which means
that the entire production of the wine from the growing field to finished
bottle of wine was accomplished at the chateau property, a large measure of assurance
of the quality control over all aspects of the wine. Everyone loved the wine. Haut-Médoc is my favorite grilled steak wine.
When I am in a filet mignon mood I often
favor a Pinot Noir because of its delicacy, but for tonight Haut-Médoc was the
right fit for this meal.
Suzette suggested that we serve soup and then cook dinner. She scooped the Vichyssoise into soup bowls. I had picked a handful of chives from the garden on our way back from our
appetizer course and I minced them and Suzette garnished the soup with the fresh
minced chives. I poured glasses of McMurray Pinot Gris and we went to the patio table to eat our soup. I loved the soup even though it
was a little lumpy. I need to mention
two things about the soup. First, Julia Child is very clear in her cookbook
that Vichyssoise is an American invention, so I think we have the latitude to
make it lumpy if we wish. Second, the
French would never serve a lumpy potato soup, but we are not French. Actually as stated above, the main reason
for the soup’s lumpiness was the lack of a sufficient amount of chicken stock
due to the limitation of the size of the pot.
As we were eating our soup on the patio the wind began to
pick up and Mike mentioned that the wind was supposed to increase into the
evening, so we decided to eat the main course inside the house.
We returned to the kitchen and Suzette prepared the two
steaks for grilling and I started to make the sauce by straining the reduced
liquid into another enameled sauce pan. I
beat the three egg yolks until smooth and added them to the liquid and then
turned on the heat to low. Suzette
put the steaks on the grill and I cut the two sticks of butter into approximately 12
one ounce slices and started adding them to the liquid. The butter began to melt into the liquid and
turn it an opaque yellow color. I turned up
the heat a touch and added more butter to try to melt the sauce and also raise
the heat a bit so it would steam off some of the liquid to increase its acidity
and flavor. When most of the butter was
melted I reduced the heat to lower the heat as possible and kept
stirring the sauce continually. When the
sauce began to thicken I turned off the heat and kept stirring so the sauce
would not break. As the sauce cooled it
thickened further and by the time the steaks arrived from the grill, in a couple of minutes, the sauce had cooled enough to not break.
Suzette added the greens to the roasted corn and calabacitas and stirred the
mixture until the greens began to collapse into the mixture and I sliced the steak
and we were ready to eat.
We ladled Béarnaise Sauce over slices of steak and took
scoops of vegetables and enjoyed our main course at the T.V. room table with
sips of red wine.
Since Mike had mentioned and noticed the new bottle of calvados I had bought, after dinner while we were sipping the last of our red wine, Suzette filled a plate with chocolates, caramels and cookies and we snacked on them and I poured three different calvados for Mike to try, the new Berneroy XO I bought at Total Wine, Santa Fe Spirits’ Apple Brandy and Germain-Robin’s Apple Brandy. Berneroy won the taste test, hands down even though it was the least expensive one. It was a legitimate XO, which meant a long aging and blending of multiple years' vintages to achieve a smooth calvados.
Here is Calvados Bernerroy's explanation of the French requirements for ageing and labeling calvados.
"AGEING
The crystal-clear spirit which flows from the still is then patiently aged in French oak barrels for several years under the Berneroy Master Blender’s watchful eye. By law, this eau-de-vie must spend a minimum of 2 years in oak casks before it can be sold as Calvados. Similar to other famous oak-aged spirits from France, calvados is defined by the following quality ranges:- Fine – minimum of 2 years oak ageing
- VSOP – minimum of 4 years oak ageing
- XO – minimum of 6 years oak ageing
At 10:00 we finally said good night after a very pleasant evening of food and wine and conversation. Mary commented that the meal was more
enjoyable because it had been well-paced over three and one-half to four hours, a nice compliment for the French style of eating.
Bon Appétit 
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