March 12, 2015  Lunch  Azuma at Wyoming and Paseo Del Norte  Dinner poached Salmon with clams on pasta with a Cranberry Pecan Cream Sauce and Asparagus

I went to lunch at Azuma today with Ioanna, who lives near the new Azuma at Wyoming and Paseo del Norte.  The restaurant is lovely with real tatami mat rooms with a sunken area under low tables with wonderful embroidered seats that look like stadiums seats that have rather rigid backs that provide support but can be moved easily in which you can sit comfortably and let your feet hang down even though you are eating at a rather low table.  We sat at a booth, so we could talk European style, since we had business to discuss.

Ioanna and I agreed to order my usual Chirashi Donburi. The box was decorated with a lovely butterfly carved out of fresh daikon root, which was fabulous. We loved lunch and I will go back any time although the slices of sashimi are thicker and thus more generous at the old Azuma on San Mateo near Montgomery.

New tatami mat rooms with new chairs

Butterfly carved from a daikon root

Chirashi and Tea pot upside down

After lunch I googled Albertsons and found that there was one at the corner of San Antonio and Wyoming, so I stopped and bought three filets of fresh farm raised Atlantic salmon for $4.99/lb.  

When I arrived at the Butcher Block I saw they also had fresh littleneck clams, so I bought ½ lb. of them ($4.99/lb.) which was 8 clams to steam for dinner to make a quick seafood stock that could be used to make a cream sauce.  There were also King Crab claws that looked great but I passed on them.

I also bought a plastic container with about two ounces of fresh dill planted in dirt in a pot, so it could be planted after using the dill for $2.49, so I had everything I needed to make gravad lax.

At 5:30 a began soaking 1/3 cup of dehydrated cranberries in white wine.

When Suzette arrived from Santa Rosa around 6:00 she did not want to cook but I talked her into poaching the salmon when I showed her the fresh salmon fillet.  I chopped garlic and a bit of onion and Suzette poached the salmon, cranberries and clams in a water, white wine, butter and garlic broth.  When the clams and salmon were poached, we made a cream sauce using about 2 Tbsps. of butter,  2 Tbsp. of flour and added 1/4 cup of diced pecans and cooked the flour and toasted the pecans.  After three or four minutes, we added added 1 cup of the seafood stock and when the sauce thickened beyond creamy, we added abut 1/2 cup of milk until it turned back to creamy and even slightly runny.  We heated some PPI pasta casarecce pasta and we steamed the asparagus and I found a bottle of 2008 Belleruche from Appellation Côtes-du-Rhône Controlle produced by M. Chapoutier in Tain, France. According to the back label, M. Chapoutier has been producing wine in France’s Rhône Valley since 1808, and interestingly, the wine label is also printed in braille.

Salmon Filet on pasta with clams and Cranberry pecan Cream Sauce

 The wine had a strong character that went well with the pecan and cranberry cream sauce and fish; not a mellow soft wine, but a strong heavy white.  Suzette liked it but I found it a bit too strong for my taste, perhaps the biggest Rhône white I have tasted in a very long time, almost as if during the five years it has spent in our cellar its fruitiness had dropped out.

Suzete called the sauce Meunière because it reminded her of a pecan Meunière Sauce made by Paul Prudhomme, but I think that is not technically correct.  Meunière sauce is typically made when fish filets are coated with flour and pan sautéed.  Almonds are often added to the butter and sauteed and then cream is then added to the browned butter and flour that comes loose from the fish filets and is whisked into a sauce to which usually capers or lemon juice is added.  Tonight’s sauce was actually a Béchamel Sauce, made with a roux and seafood stock and a bit of milk.

Bon Appétit