June 21, 2015 Dinner Party with Megan and Charlie. Teriyaki Salmon with salad, rice and stir fried vegetables and apricot and blueberry cobbler

June 21, 2015 Dinner party with Megan and Charlie Teriyaki Salmon with Stir fried Baby Bok Choy, salad and Apricot/blueberry Cobbler

We picked apricots this morning at Megan’s house and invited her to join us for dinner.  I then called Charlie and he said he was free for dinner, since Susan was still out of town.  

Megan brought a hard cheese with some fig jam from Whole Foods and some lovely big bing cherries for appetizer and salad for dinner that she dressed with Newman’s Own vinaigrette.

I made teriyaki sauce in the morning after we picked apricots and we then marinated a 1 ½ lb. piece of wild caught Coho salmon from Costco in it until we grilled it at around 7:00 p.m.

We pitted the approximately 10 lb. of  apricots and Suzette made a large pot of cooked fruit with some sugar and the juice of a lemon in the afternoon.  At around 5:30 Suzette made a jiffy cobbler recipe and baked the cobbler for 45 minutes.

Suzette soaked a cedar board in water for about an hour and we started a cup of rice cooking by boiling two cups of water with about ½ tsp. of Knorr dehydrated chicken stock and when it came to a oil adding 1 cup of basmati rice.  When  Megan and Charlie arrived Suzette put the salmon on the wet board on a heated gas grill.

Stir Fried Bok Choy 

I had picked a handful of chard and de-stemmed it and a bulb of garlic that I had finely chopped and a quarter sized piece of ginger and ½ red onion and the last two Bok Choy and two mushrooms and the last third of the box of grove brown mushrooms.  When the salmon was put on the grill I began stir frying the ginger and garlic in about 1 Tbsp. of peanut oil and a couple of dashes of sesame oil.  Suzette had asked me to make the vegetables simpler, which means less Chinese like, which means “use less soy”, so I stir fried the white portion of the Bok Choy and red onions  until they were soft, about ten minutes. Then I added the green leaves of the Bok Choy with the mushrooms and chard and about 1 tsp. of soy and 1 tsp of Chinese cooking wine and another dash or two of sesame oil.  After another minute the dish was ready.

When Charlie and Megan arrived we served Charlie a gin and tonic and Megan a glass of 2013 Pinot Noir Rose D’Autrefois  (Total  Wine $11.99 discounted to $10.79) from France’s Pay D’ Oc (being the West Bank of the Rhone River in Provence).

We ate cheese and fig jam on Breton crackers as our appetizer as Suzette showed them the garden and grilled the salmon while I made the vegetable dish.

Soon we were ready to eat.

I served rice and vegetables from the stove in the kitchen and then we took our plate outside to the grill, where Suzette served pieces of grilled fish and we proceeded to the gazebo in the garden to eat.  I took wine glasses and the Rose to the garden and poured glasses of wine.

Although they lived only two doors apart, Charlie and Megan had not met, so soon they had lots to talk about, especially since Megan and Susan had both gone to law school as adults two years apart and when they discovered they both loved art.

We drank the bottle o rose with dinner and it  went well with the salmon even though the salmon had been aria red in  teriyaki.  

When the wine was gone I filled a pitcher with ice and water and we drank water.

After we finished dinner Suzette filled parfait glasses with the scoops of cobbler and Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream Charlie had brought.

We talked until the sky darkened and we could see the radiant sliver of moon aligned with Saturn and Jupiter in the darkened sky.  A little after 9:00 we all got sleepy and said good night.

Bon Appetit