February 14, 2016 Breakfast – Sautéed Smoked Pork Chop and Fried Egg, Lunch – Posole and Blue corn Enchiladas, Valentine’s Day Dinner Party
We had invited Wayne and Elaine, Tom and Janis, Barry and Kylene, and Ricardo for a Valentine’s Day dinner. We are introduced to new recipes in our travels. This dinner party’s menu is an example of that principal. We went to Eloisa’s for lunch not long ago and ordered three interesting dishes, a Pastrami and ball park mustard taco, a duck confit soft taco with a red wine Demi-glacé sauce and a very interesting hibiscus dyed corn husk filled with a corn custard and garnished with small green French lentils. After lunch we stopped at Kakawa for a cup of hot chocolate drink flavored with lavender and garnished with whipped cream. Suzette decided on the spot at Kakawa that we should host another Valentine’s Day dinner this year and replicate the wonderful lunch, so we purchased a bag of the chocolate drink mix.
The planning and prep for the meal took several days. Suzette decided to make a Sautéed shrimp taco instead of a pastrami taco. Suzette decided to make the filling for the shrimp tacos with sautéed chopped shrimp, red onion, pasilla chile and cilantro.
We found a recipe on the Internet website called All Recipes for Chef John’s a baked corn custard. Last week I had gone to Sprouts looking for duck breasts and did not find any, so Suzette went to Keller’s and found them and bought six for around $60.00. I started the shopping on Thursday at Ranch Market for ingredients such as Pasilla chiles, limes, shrimp, hibiscus leaves, and corn husks.
Friday I went looking for veal Demi-glacé and found none, but bought a concentrated beef broth and organic beets at Sprouts and a bag of frozen white corn at Albertson’s.
Suzette went to Costco on Friday and bought 2 quarts of heavy cream and 1 quart of half and half for the corn custard recipe we selected at
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/235359/chef-johns-creamy-corn-custard/
and a plastic container of lovely large fresh strawberries.
Suzette dyed the corn husks in the hibiscus Friday night and we constructed the corn husk bowls by securing the ends with strips of corn husk.
I have John Sedler’s first cookbook, in which Suzette discovered the duck confit with red wine sauce recipe, but at the moment I can not find.
On Friday we also thawed out the duck breasts and marinated them overnight.
Saturday morning Suzette made the duck confit by covering the duck breasts with olive and canola oil and cooking them for two to 2 ½ hours.
We also went to Ranch Market to buy red chile tortillas and blue corn tortillas. They had red chile tortillas but not blue corn, so we drove to Vietnam 2000 for lunch. Suzette ordered flour sheets with shrimp paste and grilled pork. I ordered No. 21, which is a bowl filled with cool lettuce, basil, cilantro, and mung bean sprouts on the bottom, them warm boiled vermicelli rice noodles and garnished on top with fried pork filled egg rolls and grilled pork and served with a bowl of fish sauce to pour onto the dish to loosen and flavor the noodles.
We then went to El Mezquite and Ta Lin which had no blue corn tortillas. Finally we found them at Sprouts at the corner of San Mateo and and Lomas where we also bought asparagus.
When we got home we made a recipe of the creamy corn custard in our new steaming oven and Suzette tried to bake some of the custard in the corn husk bowls, which worked but did not creat the appealing appearance we wanted of a mound of custard in the middle of the bowl. We had decided to substitute huicholote (corn fungus) for the stewed lentils, so we opened heated and tasted the huicholote.
Suzette dipped some of the fresh strawberries and some pretzels in the Wilber’s Chocolate dipping chocolate we bought last time we visited her folks in Pennsylvania. We were saddened to discover that Wilber’s shuttered its operations this year, after 113 years of operation.
Saturday morning we pulled the plastic covers off the raised beds and found that everything looked great.
I ate the PPI Vietnamese dish in the afternoon and we heated up some PPI red chile enchiladas for a quick dinner.
Then we tackled the must challenging dish of the menu, the red wine Demi-glacé sauce. We started by diluting the concentrated beef broth with water, the adding a bottle of Famille Perrin Cotes du Rhone red wine and about 7 or 8 cloves of garlic. After a few minutes of cooking we realized it would not reduce sufficiently because we lacked Demi-glacé, so we decided to make a roux with the cooking medium duck fat and 2 T. of flour. We then added the strained the red wine and beef concentrate to the roux to create a lovely creamy red wine and beef flavored sauce. The sauce was a little bitter so we added sugar and La Vina port to the sauce and we liked the result.
Sunday morning we picked turnips, radishes, daikons, and greens from the garden. I diced the turnip and beets, which Suzette tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted for thirty minutes covered and then twenty minutes uncovered in the oven. Suzette picked and washed in cold water greens from the garden. Then she picked radishes and daikons, which I sliced and diced for a garnish for the tacos. Finally, in the afternoon Suzette made an avocado crema with crema sin sal and avocados I had bought at Ranch Market on Thursday.
I chilled three bottles of champagne including a rose brut for the dessert course.
We napped until 4:00 then showered and went to the kitchen.
At 5:00 Tom and Janis arrived bringing a nice bottle of Spanish Tempranillo named Volver. At 5:30 Wayne and Elaine arrived with chopped liver made by Malka Sutin and some dark heavy bread and two bottles of Gruet Blanc de Noir champagne.
We stood in the kitchen and I poured glasses of Spanish Albero Cava and Suzette gave everyone a guided tour of the the kitchen remodel. Then we went to the living room and sat and talked. Ricardo came at 6:00 bearing a bottle of Italian Prosecco and at 6:30 Barry and Kylene arrived bearing a bottle of good French champagne (the best bottle of the evening) and a bottle of Gruet Brut.
I gave Elaine a short tour of the art, while Janis and Suzette prepped the shrimp tacos garnished with green avocado Crema wrapped in red chile soft tortillas and served in a paper taco holders Suzette had ordered on line to match those used at Eloisa’s with the assistance of Ricardo in the plating and addition of the fresh lettuce from the garden and daikon and radish garnish, we sat down in the dining room and I poured glasses of champagne. After the first bottle of champagne Barry opened and poured his Louis Casters French champagne.
The shrimp taco was fabulous in the red chile tortilla. I loved it and so did everyone else. Suzette and I then returned to the kitchen and heated and plated the duck confit and roasted beet and turnip filled tacos sauced with the red wine cream sauce and served with the red hibiscus corn husk bowls filled with the creamy corn custard for which R Suzette garnished with more fresh greens from the garden. I poured the Volver Tempranillo.
After the duck course everyone started to talk about cooking and meals. Wayne said it was some of the best food he had ever eaten in a private home in Albuquerque, which I considered a great compliment. Others seemed to be of a similar mind. I felt we had planned and executed a good menu. When we finished the Volver, I poured a bottle of La Granja, which was a lighter 50% Tempranillo and 50% Grenache blend from the Carenina wine district which lies south west of Zaragoza on a tributary of the Erbo., down river from the Rioja.
We talked and then Suzette and Janis went back to the kitchen to prepare the dessert course. Ricardo helped plate the chocolate dipped strawberries and pretzels and I poured a bottle of Gruet Rose brut. Suzette and Janis then made whipped cream and mixed the Tonantzin chocolate drink flavored with lavender from Kakawe with water and heated it until it thickened and then ladled it into small Demitasse cups.
After the rose was drunk I opened a 1997 Gilbert vintage Gruet champagne which was smooth but had lost most of its fruity bubbly vibrancy.
Around 10:00 everyone left and we thanked Ricardo for helping build the support structure and move the Virgin of Guadalupe and the three Florence Pierces to the stairwell to the basement.
I enjoyed the evening and hope everyone else did. Janis reminded us this was our second Annual Valentine’s Day Dinner.
Bon Appetit
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