Breakfast was muesli with fresh red grapes and European
yogurt from Trader Joe’s
Lunch was the PPI PPI dish of creamed clams, salmon and
chicken in pasta from last night’s dinner.As I walked out the door for a ride to Paseo at 4:00 I thawed out a steak.
When I returned at 5:30 Suzette was home and watching TV and
having her cocktail, so I made what we affectionately describe as a $10.00 Gin and
Tonic. We bought a bottle of Back River Gin
at the distillery in Maine this August.
It is considered one of the top 50 gins in the world according to the
literature provided at the distillery. I
first made my drink with some Gordon’s and a bottle of Fever Tree Tonic and the
drink had a very pleasant tonic taste. But not much gin taste. Then when I added a little Back River Gin,
the drink took on a whole different flavor.
I could taste the complex flavors of the ingredients Back River added during
the distillation. I see why Suzette
calls it a $10.00 gin and tonic. It is not only because the ingredients are top
notch, but because the tonic and gin have a very different flavor than its more
insipid relative one usually finds at bars.
When I returned the steak was not thawed, so Suzette ran
water on it and then put it in the microwave to thaw. We discussed dinner and I said I would like
to have cottage fries with my steak and we needed to eat the lovely asparagus I
bought Sprouts last week ($1.77/lb.).
Suzette asked, “Do you want to sauté some mushrooms? To which I said, “Yes.” So we swung into
action.
I chopped about 1/3 cup of onion and sliced five or six
mushrooms and snapped about fifteen stalks of asparagus. Suzette ran a couple
of potatoes through the Cuisinart slicing fixture and put them in a pan with
butter and olive oil to sauté and prepared the steak for grilling and began
soaking a few of the dehydrated Porcini mushrooms we bought in Taos several
weeks ago. I put the asparagus into the
steamer and added water to it and put it on the stove. Then I went to the garden and picked four or
five stalks of garlic greens and a sprig of tarragon for the mushrooms and
turned on the propane grill. When I
returned I chopped the garlic greens and stripped the leaves from the tarragon
stem, put butter and olive oil into a skillet and added the mushrooms, onions, garlic
greens and tarragon and porcinis to the skillet and cooked them for about ten
minutes, while Suzette was grilling the steak and the potatoes were taking on a
deep golden brown color. When Suzette
turned the steak on the grill, I added a dash of Amontillado sherry to the
mushrooms and we reduced the heat and started the asparagus steaming.
In another 7 or 8 minutes Suzette brought the steak in and
sliced it into 1 inch wide strips on a cutting board. It was perfectly cooked again to medium
rare. The thin asparagus were cooked and
so were the potatoes. Suzette said, “We
need a wine. I asked her what she wanted
to drink and she said a Cabernet Sauvignon, so I went to the basement and picked
a 2008 Wellington Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon that had recently arrived
with our Wine Club membership shipment. By
the time I got back upstairs Suzette had set the table with sliver, napkins and
wine glasses. I opened the bottle of wine
and we filled our plates with a pile of potatoes, a pile of meat garnished with
sautéed mushrooms and a seven or eight asparagus and I poured the glasses half
full of wine. Everything was fresh and
delicious.
The 2008 Wellington was really terrific with the steak. It had a smooth, yet fruity flavor. We love Wellington’s wines. Wellington is located near the northern end of
Sonoma Valley just south of Glen Ellen and makes really good wines. We especially like its Mohrhardt Ridge Cabernet
Sauvignon. We also like Wellington’s Rhone style whites, such as its Marsanne Sonoma
Valley Estate and Roussanne Sonoma County, made with minimal oak in the French
style. You can check out their wines at http://www.wellingtonvineyards.com
We had cognac and chocolates for dessert as we simultaneously watched Boston beat St. Louis in game five of the World Series and Antiques Roadshow.
Another great dinner. Since I was raised in Texas, steak is the ultimate comfort food for me or if you want to be trendy, as Luke says, we ate Paleo tonight.
Bon Appétit
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