October 20, 2014 Lunch Monte Carlo Steakhouse Dinner Salad, French Onion Soup au gratin and Bananas Foster

Aaron took me to lunch today and we first wanted to go to Monica’s El Portal but it was closed, so Aaron suggested that we go to Monte Carlo Steakhouse.  I said, “I have not been there for years, Why not.”

 The large dining room at Monte Carlo is dominated by a long bar and large vinyl covered seats on rollers and booths.  This is definitely something out of the 50’s or 60’s.  I could not read the menu in the half-light so I ordered the daily special of BBQ beef short ribs with a baked potato and a Greek salad. 

Monte Carlos looking at bar and kitchen

The salad was mostly chopped iceberg lettuce with a great Greek dressing on it.  The BBQ beef short ribs were covered with a thick BBQ sweet sauce, huge but not very meaty.  I felt like a complete carnivore tearing into them with my fork, knife and teeth.   The baked potato came with two small paper cups, one with butter and the other with sour cream.  Aaron ordered a green chili hamburger, which he said was just okay.

Beef short ribs with baked potato

Green chili cheese burger with fries

I enjoyed my meal but I no longer consider a steakhouse fine dining because Suzette and I can prepare a great steak with lovely fresh vegetables any day of the week.

Suzette had suggested PPI Texas chili over spaghetti squash yesterday for dinner, but around 5:30 when we started thinking about dinner, I asked her to consider eating PPI French Onion Soup au Gratin and salad instead for dinner.  Since she had eaten meatloaf for lunch, she agreed to heat the PPI French Onion Soup.  I suggested that we make a short cut and simply melt Swiss Gruyere cheese on a piece of toast and lay it on the soup, but Suzette wanted to make the au gratin traditional method by placing slices of Swiss Gruyere cheese on a piece of toast and baking the cheese covered toasted bread in the oven in a French Onion Soup bowl to melt the cheese.   So I fetched the French Soup bowls and freshened up the salad dressing with lemon and olive oil and fetched the cucumbers and tomatoes.

While Suzette cubed pieces of tomato and cucumber and composed the salads and garnished them with some baked spaghetti squash, I went to the cellar to fetch a bottle of light red wine to drink with the soup.   I wanted a light red like a 100% Grenache, but did not see one, so I finally picked a bottle of Slow Paseo Spanish red wine ($3.99 at Trader Joe’s), which I do not remember having drunk before.  When we opened it I discovered two things.  First, the wine was not lighter, but heavier, like a Tempranillo grown in Southern Spain.  Second, the absence of a regional and grape designation on the bottle should have been a tip off that this was an unreliable wine to buy in the sense that there was too little information and thus you were at the mercy of the producer or bottler’s whim to put in a bottle whatever they could find that was cheap and mix the dosage anyway they wanted.  As dinner progressed I also struck upon a simple indication of the poor quality of a wine; Suzette will not drink a second glass of a bad wine.  Pretty label, bad wine.

composed salads

note use of spaghetti squash

We loved the French Onion Soup and both agreed that it was better reheated a third time, very much like the Texas chili that finally made it into a saucy stew-like texture instead of a watery texture with lots of separated pieces of tomato, beef and beans on the third day of cooking it.  Sometimes, PPIs are beneficial.  We loved the soup and the fresh salad.

After dinner Suzette said, “We need to eat the bananas.  I think it is Bananas Foster time.”

So I peeled two bananas and sliced them in halves lengthwise, so they would lie flat in a skillet.  I fetched the dark brown sugar and about 4-6 oz. of butter and the bottle of rum.

Bananas Foster Recipe:

I melted ½ of the butter in a large skillet and sautéed the bananas in the butter and flipped them to coat them with butter for a couple of minutes.  Then I added about ¼ cup of dark brown sugar and stirred the sugar into solution by adding more butter.  After another minute of cooking to let the sugar and butter sauce cook into the bananas, I added about ¼ cup of rum and stirred it into the sauce and cooked it for about a minute to heat it. Then I lit the sauce on fire while Suzette laughed and took a video of the process.  We have a lot of fun cooking.

flaming the bananas foster

As soon as Suzette stopped filming the flames, I blew out the fire so the sauce would retain some of the rum’s alcohol flavor.   We served the bananas foster over vanilla bean ice cream ($2.50 at Albertson’s for 1.5 quarts).  We enjoyed our whole meal; especially the wonderful use of soft bananas that would otherwise be inedible to make a delicious dessert.

Bon Appétit