If there is a methodology to our menu design, this
meal illustrates it perfectly.
Based upon my shopping and work cycles, we tend to
cycle from creating new dishes and old favorites using whatever PPIs we have,
to cooking more conventional dinners with new ingredients.
This dinner was an example of the former. We discussed using the PPI grilled salmon
teriyaki and halibut in the fridge. I
was working on my Lower Rio Grande Adjudication, but I suggested spaghetti with
a fish and vegetable garnish and Suzette agreed to cook.
She boiled spaghetti and chopped an onion, some
garlic, a tomato and some of the kale from our garden and sautéed them in a
skillet and then added the flaked fishes and a few cut up shrimp and cooked
that mixture with some white wine and thyme and salt and pepper. When the pasta was cooked Suzette finished
the dish with about 1/3 cup of cream to make a cream sauce.
While the sauce and pasta was cooking Suzette steamed several stalks of fresh asparagus.
She then constructed attractive plates by putting pasta into pasta bowls and then ladling the fish and
vegetable mixture over the pasta with spoonsful of the light cream sauce
and then garnishing the whole affair with stalks of asparagus and slices of Pecorino Romano cheese.
We drank 2011 Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc ($7.79 at
Costco).
This dinner exemplifies what is, in my opinion, one of my favorite and most creative menu approaches; a simple, flavorful one dish meal with lots of
greens, in which each forkful of the dish combines the blended flavors of PPI
and fresh ingredients; in this case, fish, shrimp slightly bitter greens,
luscious tomatoes and slightly sweet onions that combine their individual flavors
while cooking with the white wine and cream to make a complex sauce.
Bon Appétit
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