I slept-in
today. Suzette left around 9:30 for a
full day at the Center of Walfflemania for brunch, Lunch on the lawn with music by Los Radiators
and hamburgers and hot dogs, and a Spa Day featuring the introduction of a new product
line.
I had a
distinctly quite day. I lay in bed and
finished Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwen, my Last Thursday Book Club selection
for this month and the article I have been enjoying in the August 4, 2014 issue
of New Yorker about a Lawrence Livermore physicist’s machine that captures the
sound from old recordings by scanning their grooves with a computer without playing
them with a stylus, which can destroy the recording. He has made it possible to play the oldest
recordings ever made, such as the French inventor of recorded sound, Martindale-Scott’s
recording of songs on soot covered cylinders made in 1860 and Alexander Graham Bell’s first spoken
works from the 1870’s plus all the old Edison cylinder recordings and the old acetate recordings at the Smithsonian Museum.
Finally at 11:00,
after a few moments of not being able to find my wallet, I sat down and meditated
about where it could be and got the thought that it was in the car, so I went
to the car and found it lodged in the seat well on the outside of the passenger's seat. I then vaguely remembered throwing it onto the passenger's seat yesterday after lunch. I guess Suzette pushed it off the set when she sat in the passenger's seat last night when we went to the Shell Club meeting.
I then returned
Sweet Tooth to the library, went to the bank and to Birdland to discuss
improvements to increase security with Jay, who has been broken into twice recently (I am the kind of landlord who believes that if the tenant has a problem, the landlord has a problem).
Then I drove to Sprouts because I wanted to try making a stir fried udon
noodle dish for lunch with the fresh udon noodles we bought at Costco last week. Sprouts was full of shoppers. I found a nice 2/3 lb. pork porterhouse chop
(2.99/lb.) and then again asked a produce man to fetch more fresh corn and took
6 ears this time (4 ears /$1.00). I then picked about 1/3 pound of green beans ($.1.50/lb.) and about the same amount of Brussels Sprouts($1.99/lb.).
I arrive at home around 2:00 and, following the recipe on the bag of noodles, shredded ½ lb. of green cabbage, a couple of cloves of
garlic, 1 tsp. of fresh ginger, 1 Tbsps. of red onion, and ¼ lb. of pork, some purslane and 1
large white mushroom. I first heated about
2 tsps. of sesame oil, 1 tsp. of chili pepper flavored sesame oil, and ½ Tbsp.
of peanut oil in the wok. Then I stir
fried the cabbage, ginger and onion for about five minutes. I then added the diced mushroom and garlic to
the wok after another couple of minutes added the udon noodles. After a minute of cooking I drizzled about 1
Tbsp. of dark soy, 1 Tbsp. of Chinese rice cooking wine, 1 Tbsp. of Aji Mirin,
and ½ Tbsp. of Sweet soy to the noodles to try to replicate the seasoning
described in my Japanese Cook Book, Japanese Cooking, a Simple Art.
Suzette came
home around 3:30 p.m. and we unloaded the steel pipes that will be used to raise
the trampoline to make it into a canopy for another seating area and inspected
the progress of the new fence being built by Mario to extend the back yard to
include an orchard area. Then I rode to Rio Bravo while she rested until 5:00. I showered and then called Charles’ Place, which did not answer
and Los Poblanos, which was full. I made
a reservation on Open Table at Los Poblanos for next Friday night for Suzette’s
Birthday dinner. I asked Suzette what
she wanted to do and she said she was tired and did not want to go out, so we discussed
dinner. I suggested that we make her
favorite Chinese dish, Eggplant in Garlic Sauce with the fresh Ichiban eggplant
from our garden and the fresh pork to which she agreed.
So, around
7:00 I made 1 cup of rice. Then I sat on
the stoop of our back door porch and picked a basket full of purslane growing beside
it and Suzette and I picked off the clean larger leaves and threw the rest away,
yielding about 1 cup of fresh purslane leaves.
With about five minutes left to simmer, we added ½ cup of purslane
leaves to the rice.
Eggplant with Garlic Sauce.
the Sauce:
1 Tbsp. double dark soy sauce
2 tsp. Oyster Sauce
1 tsp. white rice wine vinegar
½ tsp. Shaoxing wine
½ tsp. pepper flakes from hot oil (we reduce this to avoid making the
dish too spicy)
½ tsp. of cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp. of chicken stock
Then I started
slicing the large 1 1/2 lb. ichiban eggplant into 2 inch julienne slices and then chopped
up about ten small cloves of fresh garlic from our garden that Suzette brought
me, while Suzette combined the liquid ingredients for the sauce. I then removed the pork from its bone and
removed the fat and white skin and sliced it (I should have halved the ½ inch
chop and made threads instead of slices) ending up with about ½ lb. of pork
slices.
Suzette
started stir frying the eggplant slices in peanut oil to soften and cook them.
Then she stir fried the pork and garlic and added the eggplant slices back to
the wok and after a minute or two of stir frying, made a well in the center and
added the other ½ cup of purslane and the
sauce. After another minute the dish was
ready. Suzette made a special effort to not overcook the dish so it would retain as much freshness as possible.
 |
| Suzette Stir Frying before adding sauce |
We loved the
purslane dotted rice with the fresh eggplant in garlic sauce. We both agreed that the fresh eggplant from
the garden had a firmer, more meaty flavor that complemented the fresh pork texture particularly well. It is always
more fun to cook with fresh ingredients from one’s own garden and this meal was
no exception. I drank a black and tan made with Mike Campbell’s great bock beer
and a Modelo Especial pilsner.
We ate under
the gazebo looking at our pond and fountain listening to the evening's symphony of sounds.
Suzette decided the solar lighting illuminated the pond and fountain sufficiently,
so we decided to move the four original low voltage lights to the orchard area or
the new gazebo we were making by raising the trampoline.
Bon Appétit
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