We had spent the night at the Kachina Lodge in Taos. The room includes a buffet breakfast. I took pancakes, scrambled eggs, link
sausages and a small container of yogurt. We sat at the counter in the Kiva Coffee Shop
which is one of my favorite dining rooms in New Mexico with its round countertop,
round outer wall, radiating viga roof beams and a totem pole in the center of the
café. We were served tea and
coffee. Then at 9:30 we drove to the
Farmers’ Market and bought dried chanterelle and porcini mushrooms and fresh
made goat milk chevre and a little over 1 lb. of a very heavily seeded rye
bread that sold for $6.00 a pound.
We then went to the Millicent Rodgers Museum for a very
informative talk by Robert Parsons about collecting. It was great to hear that insurance is a
problem for every collector and suggestions of how to deal with that problem.
At around noon we drove to Lisa Richard’s house on the Llano
for a memorial service for her. There
were lots of people present, with about half Taosenos and half Albuquerque,
with a few Santa Fe. Lisa’s daughter Maia
was present as was Lisa’s brother. Carl. After a lovely Buddhist oriented life celebration
with lots of people speaking about how Lisa impacted their lives, a catered buffet
was served with poached salmon, antipasto, quinoa salad and lots of Anton Berg liquor
filled chocolate bottles. We brought a
bottle of 2005 Brunello de Montalcino that I think Lisa may have given us. Anyway, it was delicious; clean fruity with
that chalkiness that gives good red wine a little toothsomeness which I call
character (you can feel the wine on your teeth as you bite into it).
There were lots of other wines and apparently Maia had
bought a case of really good Chevalier French Brut champagne.
At around 3:30 we left for home and arrived at around 6:15 p.m.
I had left the gravad lax in the fridge
for the night we were away, so it had marinated for two days in tarragon and my
usual ½ cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of salt and 1 tsp. of ground black pepper. I increased the recipe by 50% to 1 cup of
salt and ¾ cup of salt. I had used a
Keta Salmon which is not as fatty as an Atlantic Farm raised salmon. I think the lack of fat created a greater concentration
of salt in the flesh of the fish, but the saltiness could have been caused by the
longer marinating. I washed off the marinade
and dried the fish filets and cut slices and made a plate with the slices of the
grainy rye bread, salmon, capers, crema and tomato slices. We drank a beer with the salmon and that cut
the saltiness a bit. I had the momentary
way back thought that I was in Scandinavia 1000 years ago.
Bon Appétit
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