January 7, 2015 PPI Dinner of sautéd lamb, gemelli pasta, and eggplant Provencal with a kale and lettuce with Greek marinated beans

January 7, 2015 PPI Dinner of sautéd lamb, gemelli pasta, and eggplant Provencal with a kale and lettuce Salad with Greek marinated beans

I worked until 6:00 and had not thawed anything, so when Suzette arrived home shortly after 6:00 she and I went to the fridge and selected the PPI pasta with the PPI lamb cubes, two baked eggplant Provencal slices, and Suzette said she wanted to add four sliced mushrooms.  

Suzette marinated the marinated beans we bought at Cheese Mongers in Santa Fe last Saturday in olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dispel some of their vinegary flavor and then chopped kale and made a kale and lettuce salad garnished with the large white beans, balsamic and olive oil.

the salad

I wanted a light clean tasting Italian wine so I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of Barbera d' Asti ($5.99 Trader Joe’s).  I turned out to be a great bottle of wine for the price, very smooth and clean tasting.  We loved it with the pasta flavored with garlic, mushrooms and lamb.   The salad was also delicious.  We find a mixture of lettuce and curly kale to be more interesting that either alone.

After dinner I fetched the PPI Stilton, Delice and Iberico cheeses (all from Costco) and butter and toasted slices of baguette and we enjoyed the cheeses with the last of the Barbera di Asti wine.  Italian wine labels are easy to read they always include the dominant grape variety (Barbera in this case) and the city where the wine was produced (Asti in this case).

I can not describe adequately how pleasing  a delicious dinner of a combination of PPIs can be.  It is really my favorite, especially when Suzette creates the dinner menu without my input and creates something special as she did tonight.

Tomorrow night will probably be one of my favorite combinations; steak and Ratatouille with a southern Rhone red. 

Bon Appétit