June 30, 2013 Gravad Lax Salad and Cream of turnip, carrot, and beet soup and mango and peach cobbler

June 30, 2013 Gravad lax Salad and Cream of turnip, carrot, and beet soup and mango and peach cobbler

We had invited Max and Jane to join us for lunch and what has become our annual processing of the garlic plants that we had picked Saturday morning.  We had decided to get together at noon and eat lunch and then process.  We decided to make a couple of dishes with food stuffs from our garden and decided to serve a gravad lax salad and a cream of turnip, carrot and beet soup.   I had the opportunity to see that all too rare event in Stage 2 of the Tour de France, a breakaway that succeeds.  A five man break away was gobbled up by the finish except for one lone Belgian rider riding for the Radioshack team who crossed the finish line 1 second ahead of the charging peleton.  Quite exciting.

Saturday morning after riding ten miles and before leaving for Santa Fe to go to the Flea, Suzette and I had pulled all of the garlic plants, so they could dry out for a day and be easier to handle. 

We also picked a basketful of turnips, a few carrots and three beets from the garden.  Saturday evening when we returned from Santa Fe around 6:00 p.m., we processed the turnips, beets and carrots by cutting off the tops and root ends and peeling them and then dicing them into bite-sized pieces.  Then Suzette roasted them in a pyrex baking pan with olive oil and salt and pepper.  

Friday evening before the concert I had peeled and diced a bowl full of about six or seven peaches and two mangos and put them I the fridge.  On Saturday morning Suzette put sugar on the fruit and Suzette.  We made the mango and peach cobbler on Saturday evening, so we had dessert ready.

Suzette started making the soup at 9:00 a.m. by sautéing onions in butter, with lovage and celery leaves and seeds from the garden and salt and white pepper in a large enameled pot to translucent.  Then she added the roasted vegetables and about two cups of water and brought that to a simmer for thirty minutes.  Then she tried to process the soup mixture in the Cuisinart, but it was too thick to process, so we took out the submersible blender and creamed the soup and then added cream.  The soup was still too thick, so we added PPI mulled apple juice from Christmas that had been flavored with cinnamon and cloves and that loosen the soup up.  Finally, the soup tasted delicious.  After the news shows and the soup was made, we went to the garden and I pulled down the netting around the peas and pulled up several handfuls of pea plants and Suzette cut a basket full of salad greens, and I picked mburna, giant black leaves and Chinese Kale. While Suzette topped the kale in the garden, I spun and bagged and put the salad greens in the fridge to re-constitute. 

We wanted to serve Mojitos, but we needed to replenish our mint syrup water, so while Suzette made the syrup water with three cups of water and three cups of sugar, I went to the garden and picked a handful of mint plants and tore the roots off of them.  And we rinsed them off with water.  When the water and sugar formed a syrup solution Suzette turned off the heat and put about ten stalks of mint into the large enamel pot with the syrup water to infuse the mint flavor.

At eleven Suzette sliced gravad lax and I made the dressing for the salad with fresh chopped basil, mayonnaise, fresh orange juice and salt and white pepper and a touch of olive oil.  I then put the dressing into the fridge to set up a bit  Max at around noon to say they were running late and would be arriving around 1:30 p.m.  So at around 1:30 I peeled and sectioned an orange and Suzette plated up the salads with the greens, three slices of gravad lax, and a couple of slices of orange, so we would be ready to eat upon Max and Jane’s arrival.  Suzette also squeezed a cup of fresh lime juice and checked to make sure we had soda water and we strained the mint syrup into a ½ gallon plastic container and put it in the fridge.  

Max and Jane arrived at 2:00 p.m. and Suzette immediately made a pitcher of mojitos.  After a quick drink, we took the salads to the table we had set under the patio awning outside but quickly decided it was too hot to eat outside, so we returned to the table in the T.V. room and ate our salads with toasted slices of Paris Bakery French baguette (La Montanita Coop $3.99).  Suzette and Jane then went to the kitchen and filled the chilled soup bowls with the cream of vegetable soup and garnished them a dollop of crema con sal (Pro’s Ranch Market $2.19/lb.) pea tendrils and several fresh peas.  The soup was a lovely orchestration of colors (purple/pink and white and green) and had a rich, yet delicate vegetable flavor.  I was very proud of our two day effort to convert plants from our garden into delicious soup.

 

 

After lunch we went to the back yard and sat under the golden rain tree at our new little table and in about 2 hours with help from liberal sips of mojitos, Max and I cut the roots and stalks off all the garlic plants and Jane and Suzette stripped the outer husk off the garlic bulbs or divided some of them into cloves so they could be replanted or used in the kitchen. We had processed two large mixing bowls and one plastic bag of garlic; probably twenty pounds of garlic and enough to last us through the winter.   

At around 5:30 p.m. Suzette went to the kitchen to heat up the cobbler.  We wanted to serve the cobbler with a liquid but did not want a hot liquid, such as coffee or tea.  We finally decided to open the 375 ml. bottle of 1999 1^st Cru La Tour Blanche Sauternes, I had previously mistakenly frozen and then thawed out that was sitting in our fridge. We had bought it at the Maison de Vin in Sauternes when we visited France in 2005.  The Sauternes was delicious to say the least, outshining the cobbler and vanilla ice cream by a mile.   With its bold, well-integrated botrytis laced flavor, I understood why it has been a 1^st Cru since 1855.  It had no rough edge, like the Mondavi late harvest Sauvignon Blanc or the insipid flavor of the Chevaliers Sauternes.    Max asked for some basil, so we went to the garden and filled sandwich bags with basil and lavender.  We garnished the cobbler with fresh lavender flowers, we had just harvested.

  Finally, at around 6:45 p.m. we said goodbye to Max and Jane.  After a shower to get all the dirt off, we collapsed into bed a little after 8:00 into a sound sleep.

Bon Appétit