November 17, 2016 Lunch – Fish Soup, Dinner – Grilled Rib Steak with Steamed broccoli and cauliflower and making Preserved Lemons

November 17, 2016  Lunch – Fish Soup, Dinner – Grilled Rib Steak with Steamed broccoli and cauliflower and making Preserved Lemons

I heated and ate a bowl of PPI the Tomato Fish Soup after adding 1 chopped tomato, 1 clove of garlic and ¼ cup of Chardonnay.

I toasted two slices of Fano French bread and smeared them with slices of Isigny Ste.Mere Brie cheese.

After lunch I thawed an aged beef rib steak. 

At 3:00 it was clear and cool but rideable weather so I toughed it out into about a constant 20 MPH headwind north to Mountain Rd. and then rode a fast return with the 20 MPH tailwind and felt much better after being off the bike since Saturday.

Suzette called after lunch and told me she wanted to make preserved lemons for Christmas gifts this year and wanted my opinion here to buy lemons.  I told her Sprouts. 

Suzette brought home a bundle of rhubarb and a bundle of red chard from the Center’s garden around 4:00 along with five or six 1 lb. bags of lemons and a bag of cardamom pods from Sprouts.

We waited until after Antonio came to measure the kitchen for a sand blasted glass back splash and then Suzette began cooking the Rhubarb with sugar and some blackberries I had bought at Sprouts for $.99 for a 6 oz. carton. 

 I then cut a head of cauliflower and a head of broccoli into flowerets and put them into the steamer and scrapped some of the aged residue off the steak. 

Suzette grilled the steak on the propane grill and steamed the vegetables while I opened our last bottle of Tuella Douro Portuguese red wine (Trader Joe’s has discontinued this wine, so I will need to look at Total wine for a reasonably priced Douro red wine) and sliced six or seven baby portobello mushrooms and 1/2 of a shallot and 2 cloves of garlic sliced into rounds.  Suzette heated butter and olive oil in a skillet and I fetched the PPI oregano and thyme from the fridge and stripped the leaves from about 1 Tbsp. of herbs and added them to the  skillet.  We then added the mushrooms and Sauteed them until they were tender and changed color.  Then I added about 2 Tbsp. of Amontillado sherry and cooked the mushrooms for another couple of minutes while I cut the steak into slices.  Since the steak was of an uneven thickness Suzette had to cook several less than rare slices with the mushrooms for a minute to cook them to medium rare. Syzette plated dinner with slices of steak covered with sautéed mushrooms and a pile of steamed broccoli and cauliflower.  We both liked the full bodied wine with the wonderful steak and mushroom dinner. 

Although the steak suffered from its aging and we had to remove the outer layer of aging, the rest of the steak had a wonderful flavor and texture.

After dinner we made the preserved lemons.  I cut the end off the stem end of each lemon and criss cross  quartered  40 lemons and Suzette filled 8 rubber gasketed jars she had bought with about 1-2 Tbsp. of salt, lemons covered with salt, 10 cardamom pods, 6 bay leaves per bottle and we filled each bottle with lemon juice until the lemons were covered with juice.  

Here are what the Preserved Lemons look like before covering the lemons with lemon juice.

We watched  coverage of ISIS on TV during dinner and while we made the preserved lemons, but we had had enough by 8:00 when we finished the preserved lemons,  so we went to bed and read until 9:00ish.I also cut up the red chard and Suzette put in bags for a chard lasagna in the near future.

My take on the eighth man who is the mastermind behind the Paris coordinated shootings is that he has achieved what diplomacy has not, the unification among the major world powers to resolve the Syrian Crisis or at least to create a coordinated response to the ISIS attacks on Western and Russian citizens. 

Bon Appetit