April 28, 2015 Lunch - Que Huong Restaurant, Dinner – Calabacitas with Black Beans and smoked Pork cutlet

April 28, 2015  Lunch -  Que Huong Restaurant   Dinner – Calabacitas with Black Beans and smoked Pork cutlet

                James Turk called last week and we discussed going to lunch today.  I asked him if he liked Vietnamese food and he said he loved it.  I recommended a restaurant and he said, “There is a better restaurant. Que Huong is near there and it is the best Vietnamese Restaurant in town.”

I did not know I did not know the best Vietnamese restaurant in town, so I quickly said I would meet him today for lunch.  I was at Que Huong at the designated time but James did not show up so I ordered my favorite dish, Bun Thit Cha Gio (grilled pork and fried egg rolls laid on a bed of cooked rice vermicelli noodles with salad and bean sprouts underneath and garnished with chopped peanuts and pickled diakon and a dab of shiracha on top. I immediately liked the fish sauce and liked the added pile of pickled daikon salad, so would say it was the best I have had in Albuquerque ($8.00).  

Que Huong’s website offers a 10% discount coupon for seniors, so I well need to try it again.   I am especially interested in the Pho, which James said was really good.  

I rode this afternoon from 3:45 to 4:45 and had no plan for dinner when Suzette came home around 5:00.  She looked in the fridge and came up with a plan.  She would mix the PPI Pork shank and smoked cutlet with the PPI refried black beans and we would make calabacitas with the corn and yellow crook neck squash I had bought. 

Calabacitas

I finely diced ½ pasilla chili I had bought several weeks ago at Ranch Market.

Then I diced 1 onion and a sliced clove of garlic

Then 2 yellow crook neck squash

I sautéed the onion and chili and after a couple of minutes added the squash in 1 ½ Tbsp. of olive oil and 2 Tbsp. of butter.

While I was doing this Suzette cleaned 5 ears of white corn I had bought at Sprouts several weeks ago and boiled them until cooked I a large pot of boiling water.

I then cut the kernels off the cob with a knife and put the kernels into the calabacitas with about 1 Tbsp. of Mexican crushed oregano and Suzette salted and peppered the calabacitas an covered the calabacitas to let it steam.

While the calabacitas was steaming Suzette diced and sautéed the pork cutlet and put the PPI pork shank into another skillet and added the PPI refried beans and heated the beans with the pork.

I fetched Coors beers from the fridge in the garage and we were ready to eat by about 6:30.  

I was amazed how delicious the combination of a bit of refried black beans with smoked pork was when mixed with the freshly prepared calabacitas.   The combination of flavors (creamy black beans, sauteed fresh corn, onion, and chili) was greater than the its parts eaten separately. I do not recall ever tasting this sensational combination of flavors before. 

Suzette quickly reminded me that it has been a favorite food combination of the people of Meso-America for at least the last several thousand years.  Who knew?  I have always heard about beans and rice, but not beans and corn.  It is one of my new favorite dishes, and simple to prepare, with the right ingredients and inexpensive (corn was 4 ears for $.99 at Sprouts, the pasilla was 5 for $.99 at Ranch Market, the onions were 7 lb.s for $.99 at Ranch Market, the Hormel's smoked pork cutlet was $3.89/lb.. and the pork shank was $1.27/lb. at Ranch Market. And, the refried black beans were $.99 per 29 oz. (La Costena) can at Ranch Market.

   

Unfortunately, the dish tasted best with the first succulent tender corn of Spring.

I ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream in celebration of a good day’s food for dessert and went to bed happy

Bon Appétit   

I went to bed around 8:00 and woke around 10:30 and wrote this article and then watched the end of Monk with Camera about Nikki Vreeland, the first American Abbot of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. when that finished Netflix offers suggested titles and one was a documentary on Diana Vreeland, Nikki's Grandmother and Editor of Paris Vogue for many years and arguably the force behind much of American fashion and culture in the 50's and 60's.  It is hard to not be inspired to be exceptional when one watches folks like this.  This proves to me that one's family can give you or not give you that all important personality characteristic of being a leader.  These are two people on the opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, one an editor of a successful international magazine, the other a simple Buddhist monk.  Both because both are from the same family and were raised together, Nikki, the grandson of Diana Vreeland was selected by the Dalai Lama to be the first American to head a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in India. I think the common factor here is what both of them had superb leadership skills.  Nikki is surely not the most learned Buddhist or most deeply acclimated to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  Diana was surely not the most beautiful or richest woman or most knowledgeable of fashion.    

OOM