June 11. 2015 Café Laurel and Dinner, Grilled Smoked Pork Chop and Grilled sweet potatoes and sautéed chard and sweet peas and onions

June 11. 2015 Café Laurel and  Dinner, Grilled Smoked Pork Chop and Grilled sweet potatoes and sautéed chard and sweet peas and onions

Aaron Lohmann and I tried the new Cafe Laurel at 1433 Central SW today for lunch.  I missed the notice on a chalkboard that it makes three kinds of quiche, so selected a Christopher’s sandwich from the menu.  The sandwich was delicious, warm roast beef and cheddar cheese on a warm fresh Kaiser-like roll with a smear of mayonnaise on one bun side and an avocado smear on the other bun.   The sandwich is served you’re your choice of a garden salad or fruit salad and a couple of slices of lovely Q pickles.   I took the green salad with a small ramekin of the house made creamy herb dressing which was delicious also.   The sandwich and salad was $8.75, which is probably a good price for a good freshly made sandwich and salad these days.   We paid about that in a bakery in Mantes, France ten days ago for a hot sandwich, a pastry and a drink.

The only problem is my thinking about prices for lunches is distorted by the fact that when I began working over forty years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, most restaurants offered a lunch with a small salad, a plate filled with a starch, a vegetable and a meat dish, a piece of bread and dessert for $1.29.  I guess things change.  My dad used to tell me that in the 30’s you could get a big bowl of chili con carne in Fort Worth for a nickel.

Café Laurel seems to excel at baked goods and seems to be doing things right.  My hope is that it will develop its menu into more adventurous areas of prepared dishes and still maintain its quality.

 Monday night when we returned I went shopping at Ranch Market and bought a three pack of smoked pork chops, so we decided to eat them tonight with and adaptation of the Catalonian Spinach recipe from our tapa cookbook. 

Catalan Chard

I diced 4 Tbsp. of yellow onion

2 tsp.  chives, minced

1 gala apple, diced

I picked about two cups of chard and several more very mature snow peas in and our garden that had large peas inside and Suzette washed and de-stemmed and opened the snow peas to obtain the peas.

¼ cup of  shelled pinon nuts

We sautéed the onion, chives and apple for about ten minutes to cook them, then Suzette added the chard peas from our garden and cooked it for a minute and then added the pinon nuts and sautéed the dish for another minute.

Suzette also grilled the pork chops with slices of an organic sweet potato she had been given by an organic farmer that she peeled.

The combination of colors of the ingredients made a lovely plate.   We buttered the sweet potatoes and combined the apples, the fresh peas and chard, and pinon nuts with bites of pork for a lovely meal.

We drank a bottle of 2013 hand harvested Chateau La Tour Sainte Anne Côtes de Provence that was lovely; light almost no noticeable fruit or tannin on the front with a light fruity after taste.  We loved the wine and the meal.   I guess I bought it at Total Wine for around $10.00, because I failed to notate the purchase information on the bottle because it was coated with plastic.

Today after lunch I went to Ranch Market to buy eggs for Suzette, which are now $3.59 per dozen.  God save us from the bird flu.  I also bought spumoni ice cream ($3.49 for 1½ quarts), avocados (4 for $.99), a 4 lb. papaya ($.99/lb.), and 6 manila mangoes (3 for $.99). 

After dinner we made an Italian cloud cake for the neighborhood cocktail party but lost the notes with the adjustments that Joseph Wede (of Joseph’s Table in Santa Fe)gave us, so it did not brown or hold its height as well because the baking times must have been off a bit.   It still looks lovely, though.

Bon Appétit