June 14, 2013 Flying Star and Neighborhood Cocktail Party

June 14, 2013 Flying Star and Neighborhood Cocktail Party

It was a lovely day and so I suggested to J.B. and Mary Lou Dobbs that we go to Flying Star for lunch.  When I arrived I found Mary Lou and J.B. already talking.  Mary Lou ordered a seasonal dish, Tres Grains Salad, with Organic red quinoa, roasted barley, Israeli pearl couscous, cranberries, mint, feta, daikon radish and tomatilla vinaigrette that looked lovely, but I decided that hamburgers was such a large part of the men that I should try one, so I decided to order a hamburger today.   I saw that there were hamburgers served with caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms so I ordered a hamburger cooked to medium rare with the onions and mushrooms and no pepper.

When it came out of the kitchen it also had a slice of crisp bacon on it and it was served on a homemade roll and besides the onions and mushroom was also garnished with a slice of tomato and red onion.  It was a perfect hamburger, just the way I would want if I was designing one. I loved it.  J.B. ordered the BLT Sandwich.

June is one of my favorite month for mangos because it is when the Ataúlfo mango crop matures. Here is some info from Wikepedia about Ataúlfo mangos.

Ataulfo mango
Ataulfo mango (left), tommy atkins (right)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Sapindales
Family:	Anacardiaceae
Genus:	Mangifera
Species:	Caesia Mangifera

The Ataúlfo, also called young, baby, yellow, honey, manila,^[1][2] Adaulfo,^[3] or Adolfo^[4] is a mango cultivar from Mexico.^[5] It is closely related to the Alphonso variety popular in India.

The Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial) granted the designation of origin of this fruit to the government of Chiapas. The land where this Mango was found was owned by Mr. Manuel Rodriguez until 1948 when Mr. Ataulfo Morales (who worked as a jeweler) bought the property and mango trees were already there. Since 1950 mango trees began to attract the attention of people. In 1958 the agronomist Hector Cano Flores (the discoverer of Ataulfo Mango), Head of Sector extinct Mexican Coffee Institute, began to do research. The Engineer Cano made a clone of Mango Ataulfo called IMC-M2. Shortly later the whole plant material is transferred from INMECAFE (Spanish: Instituto Mexicano Del Cafe. English: Mexican Coffee Institute) to the National Commission of Pomology and went from there spreading this Mango. Years later, the grown to be known as "Ataulfo", the name by which the Engineer Cano christened this Mango.

Ataulfo mangos are golden yellow and generally weigh between 6 and 10 ounces (170 and 280 g), with a somewhat sigmoid (oblong) shape^[5] and a gold-blushed yellow skin.^[1] Their buttery flesh is not fibrous, and they have a thin pit.^[5][6] Their flesh is a deep yellow and high in sugar (15 grams per 100-gram serving), with a rich, sweet flavor.^[5][6] They are rich in vitamin C and dietary fibre.^[1]

The fruit grows in warm, moist climates with summer rains, but monsoon isothermal oscillations must not suffer more than 41 °F. The proper temperature for this type of handle is 83 °F and rainfall between 1090–3000 mm annually, from April to October.

Ataulfo mangos have only recently gained popularity in the United States, though they have been a major crop in Mexico for decades.^[5] They come from the Mexican states of Michoacan, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Veracruz and Chiapas, and are sold between March and September.^[1] As of 2009, they are the second-most popular variety of mango sold in the United States, behind the Tommy Atkins.^[7]

 I saw that Pro’s Ranch market had Ataúlfo mangoes on sale for 5 for $.99 this week so I went over and picked up ten of them.  So had decided to make cobbler last week and had also bought about two lbs. of nectarines (Pro’s $.69/lb.) and we had quite a few blueberries left in the fridge that would be great in cobbler.  So I decided to make a mango, nectarine and blueberry cobbler for the Neighborhood Cocktail party.  I started peeling and cubing fruit at 5:00.  By 6:00 p.m. I had peeled and cubed nine mangoes and a couple of the small nectarines (white peaches) when Suzette came home from a long day of working in Santa Rosa. . She had a quick drink and then made double recipe of dough using Laura Williams’ Jiffy Cobbler recipe:

1 stick of Butter (1/4 lb.)                               ½ tsp. of salt
1 cup flour                                                          1/3 cup of sugar
3 tsp. of baking powder                                                2/3 cup milk
4 cups of fruit with ¾ cup of sugar
Melt butter in 8 inch square pan.

Mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in small bowl.  Add milk and stir until just blended.  Spoon batter over the melted butter carefully (don’t stir).  Pour fruit over batter.

Bake in 375˚ oven for 35 minutes.  If canned fruit is used, drain it before starting recipe.

I finished peeling and cutting nectarines about 6:45 and by which time Suzette had decided to use a ceramic baking dish and a deep pyrex baking dish and put butter in them and melted the butter in the microwave to a hot liquid and combined the hot butter with the dough ingredients: the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar and milk like a drop biscuit and then combined the fruit with the dough and put the cobblers into a pre-heated oven and baked them for 45 minute, since there were two of them. 

We took the cobbler out of the oven at around 7:15 and arrived at Ericka Anderson’s house, who was the hostess for this month’s party, at around 7:30 p.m. with a hot cobbler straight from the oven.  I was pleased to meet Ericka, who it turned out was the daughter of my old friend Charlie Anderson.  Ericka is also a lawyer and her mother and brother are artists. Her house is filled with modern furniture, like an Eames Chair Lounger, and several Le Corbusier Cube chairs and Barcelona chairs and lots of wonderful art painted by her mother and brother. 

The cobbler received lots of compliments and was gone within an hour.  We saw lots of neighbors.  We took a bottle of 2007 Viña Eguía Rioja Reserva ($7.99 at Costco after the $2.00 discount) to the party and it made a bit of splash also.  Here is a review from Costco’s site:

This is a real stunner for only $10 at Costco. I casually threw this in my cart as I do with a lot of $10 Riojas because I know they will be good, but this one really caught me off guard. This tastes like a $25 Rioja. What a bargain. Dark, but not too dark in the glass, the nose has a little earth and spice (distinctly Spanish); medium in body, this wine hits with intense red fruit and cherry flavors balanced perfectly with the oak aging.  This leads to a nice dry finish, very clean and elegant throughout. It's hard to believe this is only $10.  I plan on putting a few of these away.  Definitely try this wine.  I'm going to place it on our Value Picks and our Bronze Rated wines lists.  When a wine makes two lists, it's almost always worthy seeking out. CostcoWineBlog.com Rating: 90 Points

The best dish of the party was Jennifer Bean’s poached salmon garnished with capers and slices of lemon and dill and served with a dill mayonnaise sauce.  There were several other good dishes including slices of store bought gravad lax on crackers and several types of olives and salami rolled around a cream cheese smear.  The second best dish was a zucchini pancake that looked and tasted a little like a potato latke but was made with some flour and egg (pancake mix) to bind it together. Someone brought a Dry Creek Sauvignon Blanc that I really enjoyed with the poached salmon.  After a couple of hours of pleasant conversations, we went home.

Bon Appétit