Today Willy stayed home so we agreed to go to
lunch. Willy wanted to go to a new
restaurant. At around 1:30 I suggested
Café Miche, since Willy had visited friends in Copenhagen this summer and
really liked it.
We drove to Café Miche at Third and Gold and sat at a table by a sunny
begonia filled window.
Willy took a while to make up his mind. He finally settled on a turkey sandwich. The waiter, who now treats me as a regular
upon only my third trip to the restaurant, recited the daily specials and we
both were immediately attracted to the Vichyssoise, so we decided to share a
bowl of it. I ordered my favorite
herring plate ($11.00) which contains one wine sauce herring and one spiced
herring, a pile egg salad and four toast wedges coated with Klaus’ special duck
fat and bacon spread, a few slices of red onion, a few pickled carrots
and a slathering of small capers. We each ordered a bottle of Danish Carlsberg Green, which is now available in this country.
The Vichyssoise was richer than I had thought it
would be. Apparently it was made with
more cream and less chicken stock. It
also had a ring of sour cream expertly laid on its surface with a specially
tipped pastry tube and garnished with pieces of crisp bacon and herbs. We both loved the
soup. When we sat down the young lady
who bussed and served water and bread said, “The hot roll will be coming out of
the oven shortly.” Within minutes she
served us each a roll and creamy butter from a basket of beautiful rolls glazed
with butter and seeded with sesame seeds.
Doesn’t something like this make your lunch that much more special. After yesterday’s disastrous lunch of old
moldy crab cakes for $12.00 at Standard Diner, I felt like I had been
transported to Heaven by paying for a ticket with my $11.00 lunch of herring,
which was ten times better food. Don’t
you want to go to a restaurant where they make you wait three minutes for the
freshest rolls in town?
Willy must have loved the soup and the roll because
he tore off pieces of roll and dipped them in the soup and ate the little
mounds of creamy potato/leek soaked bread.
Willy’s turkey sandwich was just that; a thick slice
of Pullman bread with several slices of Boarshead turkey breast and a mound of butter
lettuce served open face Danish style. I
asked Klaus if we could try his homemade gherkins and then I mentioned that I
had not tried his homemade pickled beets.
Soon we were brought small plates filled with both. If you have never eaten a Danish gherkin or
pickled beet, you now have no excuse to wait any longer. To my taste they are among the world’s great
foods along with a
nything else that Klaus pickles, like his carrots and
herring.
Klaus has gone back to his roots and is now
preparing and serving wonderful Danish specialties. As I said in my last review, he has chosen to feature
classic Danish favorites. Klaus even
makes his own Danish farmhouse cheese and smokes it over hay to give it a more
traditional local flavor. So the
intensity of cuisine, especially Danish Cuisine, is very high at this moment
and anyone who wants to taste authentic Danish food should immediately go to
Café Miche. One traditional dish I have
not mentioned that one should try if one wants to try a traditional Danish food
pairing is Klaus’ Homemade pate with his homemade gherkins. Unfortunately, the pate is served in a large
slab on a slice of the Pullman bread as a single dish, which is an overwhelming
quantity for me most days. I would
prefer that it be served Danish style as one of an assortment of other open
faced sandwiches on Danish Rye bread.
That way you get to try several of the uniquely Danish meat and
condiment and pickle pairings in one meal.
As we ate Judge James parker and two lunch companions came into the
restaurant, so after our meal I said hello and asked them about their
meal. Judge Parker had ordered and liked
the Vichyssoise also.
Dinner - I had planned to fix the three new Linguisa
sausages I bought at Sprouts for dinner.
Suzette was supposed to bring home several squashes from the Center’s
garden. When she arrived without the
squashes I started looking through our depleted larder after fetching a bottle
of Benton Lane Pinot Noir Rosé and putting it in the freezer to chill. I found the 1/4 head of fresh green cabbage
and Suzette took the PPI (previously prepared ingredient) container of brat and
sauerkraut with onions and apples from the fridge. We had half of a fresh Japanese cucumber
sitting on the counter. I thinly sliced
1/2 yellow onion and about ¼ of one of the two red bell peppers I bought at
Sprouts (4 for $1.00), while Suzette sautéed sautéed the sausages in a large
skillet, which yielded a large quantity of oily paprika laden liquid, which
Suzette used to sauté the onions and cabbage in another skillet.
I had diced the cucumber in anticipation of adding
it to the cabbage, but Suzette said, “Why don’t we make a cucumber and tomato
salad”. I said, “I saw several tomatoes
that are ready to pick in the garden.
Why don’t you go to the garden and pick them while I dice the tomatoes
we have in the crisper?” As I was coring
and dicing a vine ripened tomato from Sprouts ($.98/lb.), Suzette delivered two
small ripe red tomatoes and about five or six yellow pear tomatoes. As I diced the tomatoes Suzette fetched the
PPI Green Goddess dressing and combined and dressed the cucumbers and tomatoes
in a bowl and then fetched two types of mustard, catsup, and Willy’s basil
mayonnaise and put them on the lazy-susan and set the table on the patio under
the awning; just in case it rained.
Suzette plated the sausages which she had added to the cabbage mélange
and I fetched the bottle of 2011 Benton Lane Rosé we had bought and had shipped
from the winery in May 2012.
The wine had lost much of its fruitiness, but still
retained its strong pinot noir character; a dark heavy rosé with a great depth
of pinot noir softness and fruit.
The fresh cool tomato and cucumbers floating in
Suzette’s lovely green goddess dressing made with fresh herbs from our garden
was the best dish of the meal for me, although everyone liked the new sausages
with their paprika overtones, as you can see in the picture of the sausage cut open above. Willy
returned from the gym and joined us near the end of dinner.
Bon Appétit
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