May 5, 2015 Lunch - Que Huong Dinner- Fresh baked Grouper with rice and asparagus

May 5, 2015 Lunch - Que Huong    Dinner- Fresh baked Grouper with rice and asparagus

Today James Turk invited me to lunch at his favorite Vietnamese Restaurant, Que Huong, which appears to be a pastoral region of Vietnam.  I ordered the Pho with rare beef and meat balls and James ordered curried chicken with rice.  I thought the pho was good, not great.  James thought the Curried Chicken should have had more curry sauce to mix with the rice.  I guess we are getting close to the our trip to France and my taste buds are getting sharper.

After lunch I drove across the street to Ta Lin and bought Swad Sweet Mango Chutney, 1 lb. of fresh grouper, a bag of Shanghai baby bok choy, oyster sauce, and ginger.

I drove home and took a nap until 4:00 Suzette came home around 5:30 and we started cooking around 6:00.  We decided to make the aluminum foil wrapped baked fish.  I filleted the fish into two filets and diced a shallot and about 2 Tbsp. of pasilla chili and Suzette laid pads of butter and a drizzle of white wine, some of the shallots and pasilla onto the fish filets and sealed the aluminum bags and baked them in the oven for about 45 minutes.  She de-stemmed asparagus and put it into the steamer with some water and put the PPI rice into a pyrex loaf pan and covered it with saran wrap.

I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2014 Domaine Guy Mousset Côtes du Rhône rosé I bought at Total Wine on April 10, 2015 during the French Wine sale with a list price of $12.99 and $11.04 after the 15% discount.  This is a new bottle to me but it looked interesting, so I bought it.  It could be my new favorite rose for the summer, right up there with Benton Lane.  

Here is a review:

(90) 2014 Domaine Guy Mousset Cotes du Rhone Rosé (France). This delightful and crisp Rosé offers fresh flavors of strawberry and cherry. Made primarily from Grenache, this dry and clean rosé is nicely balanced with a refreshingly long finish. ($15)

I took out the three PPI cooked artichokes and the PPI Tzatziki and put an artichoke in a soup bowl and some tzatziki in a small bowl for each person and set them on the table.

When Mike arrived I opened the bottle of rosé and we drank wine and ate the artichokes.

We loved the wine.  It was dry but not bitter, a lovely wine for $11.00.

When the asparagus were cooked and the rice heated Suzette took the aluminum bags out of the oven and opened them and laid a pile of rice on each plate and place fish and the baking medium on the rice and I added  six or seven asparagus to each plate and we were ready to eat after filling the glasses with the last of the rosé.

We had a lovely light dinner.

After dinner I made Mike and me small bowls of chocolate ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate sauce, maraschino cherries and whipped cream decorated with an Italian lady finger. We ate the ice cream sundaes with sips of grappa for Mike, Cognac for Suzette and Calvados for me.

The fresh grouper reminded me of Sayulita, where you can go to the local fish market in the afternoon and buy fresh grouper as the fishermen bring the groupers in from their boats.  It was that fresh.

Bon Appétit