August 6, 2015 Lunch – East Ocean Dinner at Susan and Charles Palmer’s

August 6, 2015  Lunch – East Ocean  Dinner at Susan and Charles Palmer’s

I worked until 12:30 and then drove to East Ocean for my favorite quick delicious modestly priced lunch of Scallops in Lobster Sauce with fried rice and a small side dish of Fred chicken doused with sweet and sour sauce.  As you can see the rice is mixed into the lobster sauce to enhance the flavor of both, which is a basic strategy in Chinese Cuisine, just like saucing a grilled piece of meat is a basic strategy in European Cuisines.  Today they used bay scallops instead of deep sea scallops.  I like deep sea scallops better because they are sliced and put in raw and their milky liquid is released as they cook, which blends its flavor into the lobster sauce.

Suzette was going to Santa Rosa today and we discussed dinner and decided to call the Palmers to see if they wished to cook together.  I called Susan mid morning and she was receptive.  I said we would bring asparagus and the strawberry rhubarb compote we made last night, if they could make a meat.

Later in the afternoon we talked and Susan said they were planning to fix steak and we should come at 7:00.

Suzette arrived a little after 6:00 and relaxed while I continued to work on my water case until almost 7:00.  We then grabbed a bottle of 2012 Perrin Famille Cotes Du Rhone Reserve, an artichoke, the strawberry/rhubarb compote, and the bag of asparagus and walked down  the street to the Palmer’s.  

When we arrived Susan had set out appetizers of Boursin cheese, pistachio nuts, and crackers.  We nibbled and talked and Suzette and I sipped glasses of the red wine as we prepped dinner and I boiled the artichoke. I snapped the ends off the asparagus and loaded them into the asparagus steamer.  Susan made a lettuce, cucumber and cherry tomato salad.  Susan also had bought and cubed a seedless watermelon Susan then boiled ears of corn, while Charlie grilled the boneless ribeye steaks he had previously sous vided for four hours.  The benefit of charbroiling sous vide meat is to impart an attractive texture and flavor too an otherwise fully cooked piece of meat.  The result with the steak this evening was an incredibly tender texture, with a bit of surface charring.  Sous vide still seems almost culinary trickery to me because one is cooking meat twice to make it appear that it is being cooked only once.

Charlie put a garlic salt and pepper rub one the steaks before he grilled them, which gave the steaks more flavor.  In fact, Suzette and I thought the steaks had a slightly salty flavor. 

Susan served Tahitian vanilla gelato with the strawberry/rhubarb compote for dessert and we discussed the problems Blue Bell has had and its progress of re-starting production.  Charlie said something interesting and insightful.  His dream scenario for the Presidential election is for the Republicans to turn on Trump, Trump to get pissed off at the Republican Party, and run as a third petty candidate and split the conservative vote thus allowing the democratic candidate to win with less than a majority of the votes the same way Bill Clinton won with only 42% of the votes over George H.W. Bush in 1992, because Ross Perot garnered 19% of the votes. We did not watch the Republican debate because it would probably just upset us.

The most exciting thing on the home front is that Mike Conrad the contractor finished installing the lam beams to support the roof and opened up the walls between the kitchen and the den.  We now have an open expanded space without walls that includes the kitchen, the T.V. room and stairwell to the basement.   According to Suzette we are on schedule and under budget, which made Charlie and Susan chuckle, since their house remodel took over three years.

Bon Appetit