October 28, 2015 Lunch – Greenhouse Bistro, Dinner – French Onion Soup

October 28, 2015 Lunch – Greenhouse Bistro, Dinner – French Onion Soup

Aaron drove me to a meeting in Los Lunas this morning that ended a little after 11:00, so at 11:30 I invited him to lunch at the Center for Ageless Living.  After a short tour of the buildings and grounds, we went to the Greenhouse Bistro.  There were two or three interesting soups.  Aaron ordered a green curry cream soup and I ordered a roasted tomato soup to compare the Bistro’s to the lovely one I had yesterday at Torino's.

The tomato soups were amazing similar and both delicious.  In fact the Bistro one may have been slightly more herby, which I liked a lot.

I tried a spoonful of Aaron’s. It was too spicy for me, but Aaron loved it. After considering the considerable number of menu choices, we decided to split a Cuban sandwich.  The kitchen was kind enough to put ½ on separate plates with a small salad, raspberry vinaigrette, and a pile of potato chips on each.  We drank water.  We both loved our sandwiches.  Aaron was very impressed with the Center and the restaurant and admired and understood the integration of the public retail areas with the assisted living areas.

For dinner I wanted to use the PPI ribeye steak and sautéed mushrooms to make onion soup.  I always use Julia Child’s recipes for classic French dishes and onion soup is no exception.  I thinly sliced 5 cups of onions and placed them in a large Le Creuset casserole with 4 oz. of butter and 1 Tbsp. of Spanish olive oil on low heat and tossed them to coat them with oil and the sweated them in the covered casserole for fifteen minutes.  Suzette came home at 6:00, so I uncovered the casserole and added one tsp. of salt and ½ tsp. of sugar. Suzette set the timer for forty minutes as I went out the door to go meditate.  

I stopped at Lowe’s for tonic water and bought a 1.75 liter bottle of Bacardi Gold Rum for $18.99, which seemed like a good price.  I returned home at around 8:30 and finished the soup by sprinkling 3 Tbsp. of flour on the wilted and slightly caramelized onions and cooking them for 3 minutes to cook the flour.  We the slowly added the 2 quarts of stock I had made with the diced PPI steak and portobello and chanterelle mushrooms and two beef boullion cubes so that the soup would not get lumpy.  I then ate a bowl and realized I had not adjusted the salt and pepper, so I added thre grinds of black pepper and about ½ tsp. of salt.

I made a cheese sandwich with the new Fano baguette and ate another bowl of soup for dinner with a glass of the Perrin Famille Cotes du Rhone Reserve ($8.99 less 10% at Total Wine).  I loved the extra added attraction of bits of steak and mushrooms in the soup, for their texture, their flavor and the variety they gave to the otherwise monochromatic texture of the onion soup.

At 4:00 on the morning of the 29th, we awakened to see the conjunction of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus and perhaps one of Venus' moons. Interesting.

 

Bon Appetit