December 19,
2014 Lunch Cafe Lush Dinner
Braised Cod with Mushrooms, Bamboos Shoots and Yu Choy
Today was a
great day because I spent quality hours with Willy. We started by going to Consensus Planning to
have lunch with Jim Strozier, who could not have been nicer. He showed around their office.
After the
tour of the office, we walked the long block to Café Lush for lunch. I was not expecting much at Lush but was
surprised that it had an interesting menu that featured lovely salads. Willy ordered a Mango Chicken Salad that was
beautiful and interesting, Mango slices, edamane, scallions, basil leaves,
strips of grilled chicken on a bed of organic spinach dressed with a creamy
blueberry vinaigrette and garnished with bacon bits. I had trouble deciding what to order because I
wanted something without fresh black pepper.
I finally settled on a Cesar Salad with extra lettuce and after a
discussion between the waitress and the kitchen, it was garnished with sliced
ham, focaccia croutons, grated Parmesan cheese and amazingly, lemon zest. Jim
ordered a burger. Jim’s burger looked
great also. Café Lush is decidedly better than it was when it opened several
years ago, which I think is due to an expended more interesting menu and more
help in the kitchen. I really liked the
menu and will go back and recommend Café Lush.
Of course, it is now going head to head against Vinaigrette, so it has uped its game.
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| Cesar Salad with ham |
We passed on
dessert and returned to Consensus Planning’s large conference room, where we
had an interesting discussion about what Willy was doing and what Jim was
doing. Jim though Willy was on an interesting path, looking at the interaction
of transportation modalities. I got a
chance to reminisce with Jim about Westland's projects and he filled me in on what is
now Barclay’s land. It
appears there is major development going on in the petroglyph area and Jim has
just finished or is working on master plans for the rest of what was Westland’s
47,000 acres for Barclay’s.
Jim and
Consensus Planning have been involved and are involved in planning many of the
major projects in the Albuquerque area.
One of the things I learned is that Consensus specializes in landscape
design of parks all over New Mexico.
Suzette
called and said she was on her way to Coronado Mall to look at the suit Willy
selected, so after saying our goodbyes to Jim, we drove to Macy’s at Coronado
Mall. Willy tried on the suit and I, as
the proud father, bought him his first suit.
He selected a black Calvin Klein slim fit suit that fit him perfectly,
no alterations needed. We bagged it and
paid for it and carried it out of the store.
I asked Willy if he would go to TaLin with me to shop for something for
dinner and he agreed.
When we
arrived a TaLin we saw that TaLin had a pop up Dumpling restaurant on Thursdays
and Fridays, so we wandered over to the lunch counter area in what used to be
the restaurant.
We ordered
four salmon and four pork stuffed dumpling and Willy ordered a chia. I then went to the fish department and saw
that they had fresh cod. Then I went
back to the Café and tasted the salmon and pork dumplings with Willy. We both liked the pork stuffing best with the
traditional dipping sauce. The dumplings
were served with a small bowl of either hot and sour or egg drop soup. We chose Hot and Sour and the lady who served
us was correct, it was authentic. The
pork dumplings are 8 for $8.00 and the salmon are 8 for $10.00. Try it you will love the fresh made to order
dumplings.
I left Willy
to finish the dumplings and picked up English mint jelly, Spanish pimientos,
Japanese dried Iko Wakame seaweed, medium tofu, and a bottle of Gekkeikan Haiku
premium sake ($10.88) on my way back to the seafood area. When I arrived my favorite fish monger was in
the department.
After serving one other
person he turned to me and asked me what I wanted. I selected an Atlantic Cod ($5.35/lb.)
that looked particularly fresh and asked him to cut a 1½ lb. piece. Before cutting the fish, he laid the fish in
front of me and using his hands identified the areas in which he would make the
two cuts. He put one hand behind the
gill area and front side fin to indicate that he was going to eliminate all the
bony areas around the head and then the other hand at the end of the belly; the
perfect cut for what I wanted, just meat.
I love this routine and have been going through it with this same fish
monger for over 20 years. It is another of
the high points of my shopping experiences at TaLin. Rather like last year's delivery of fresh large lobsters.
On the way
to the freezers, in the meat area of the meat department I saw and had an
employee hand me a package of four fresh duck thighs and legs for $10.00. At the freezers I selected small bags of frozen
beef, pork and fish balls for soups.
Willy rejoined me at this point and when we walked to the end of the
aisle where the fresh refrigerated items are located, I saw that there were
fresh beef and pork balls, so I exchanged the frozen for the fresh balls and also
picked up a bag of fresh Vietnamese rice noodles. I walked the aisles to find the two things I
really needed, which was a can of bamboo sliced shoots and a bag of dried
Shitake mushrooms. We then walked to the
produce area and selected about a lb. of shallots, a bag of Yu Choy, two sprigs
of fresh ginger, and a bag of Rah Ram.
So we were ready for a great Chinese fish dinner and a real Vietnamese
soup for lunch and maybe Duck L’ Orange this weekend.
The pace of
cooking is definitely picking up. We
checked out. The total was $53.03. I felt like it was a really successful eating
and shopping experience and I think Willy did also.
When we
arrived home a little after 4:00 we selected a couple of my father’s like new
Sulka ties to try with Willy’s new suit, which he will wear to a wedding this
weekend and a black belt that is too short to get around my waist.
Suzette came
home around 4:45 and we spent a little while together trying to teach Willy how
to tie a full Windsor knot. We finally
succeeded by me tying the tie around my neck from memory and then removing it
from my head and Willy had two new ties to go with his new suit.
I started on
dinner around 5:45 I found a recipe in the Chinese Gourmet Cookbook by William
Mark (page 94) for Braised Cod with Bamboo Shoots and Mushrooms. I saw that the recipe required 6 mushrooms to
be soaked in hot water to re-hydrate, so I started a cup of rice and then
heated water in the kettle and opened the new bag of dried mushrooms and the
can of bamboo shoots. After measuring 2
cups of water and adding some of the wakame seaweed and a dash of instant dashi
to a sauce pan and letting it come to a boil, I added 1 cup of rice.
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| the dish as shown in the Cookbook |
I then used
the 2 cup measuring cup to soak the mushrooms.
I opened the mushrooms and put six in the measuring cup and added hot
water to cover them and then weighted the mushrooms down so they would be
submerged under the water with one of Willy’s half-filled water bottles. I then cut the cod into ½” by 2½” strips as
the recipe indicated and put the marinade ingredients on it and stirred them in
with the cod strips to mix them well and put that into the fridge to marinate.
I then
minced 1 tsp. each of garlic and fresh ginger for the fish and 1 tsp. of ginger
for the Yu Choy.
At this point I
discussed with Suzette, combining the Yu Choy with the cod dish and she agreed
to make only the one dish. So I prepared
the Yu Choy by cutting the stems and leaves into 1½” strips. I opened and drained the bamboo shoots and
was ready to cook. The recipe called for
deep frying the fish in 3 cups of peanut oil, but I used only 2 to 3 Tbsp. of
peanut oil in my wok (peanut oil is now around $50.00 per gallon, so can not to
be wasted deep frying a few strips of fish).
This limited the number of strips of cod I could cook, so I asked
Suzette to help me and she immediately added another ¼ cup of peanut oil so the
entire amount of fish strips could float in the oil. We must not have gotten the oil hot enough
because the fish strips did not brown as the recipe indicated. Suzette put a paper towel in a large pot and
removed the strips to the pot to drain and I then started finishing the dish by
adding the ginger and garlic to the wok.
I then removed the stems from the mushrooms and sliced them into strips
and added the mushrooms, Yu Choy, and bamboo shoots to the minced ginger and
garlic. I then added some hot water to
the mushrooms water and added some chicken stock to the mushroom water to get
it to 1 ½ cups and added the broth and the fish strips and covered the wok as
the recipe directed. The sauce did not seem
to be thickening, so Suzette suggested we cook the mixture uncovered to drive
off more moisture. I also turned the
mixture to try to integrate the cornstarch on the fish with the liquid. Finally after about ten minutes things
started to coalesce. I added the oyster
sauce, Chinese cooking wine and dark soy and stirred the mixture a few more
times and it thickened enough to serve.
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| Braised Cod dish in Wok before adding last flavorings |
I poured the
Sake into a small ceramic pitcher and heated the pitcher in a pot of water.
We ladled
rice into pasta bowls and then the fish mixture over the rice and took our
plated to the TV room table where we filled small teacups with sake and had a
lovely meal. Suzette liked the
dish. It is very similar to the one I
made last week with beef. The Chinese
Gourmet Cookbook likes to use cornstarch to marinate meat and then let the
cornstarch mix with the other ingredients to make the sauce rather than using a
thickening sauce at the end of the prep.
We liked the
dry slightly peachy flavor of the Haiku.
Although its label said to drink it chilled we liked it hot. I guess we are not true sake aficionados yet.
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