February 3, 2016 Cooking Lunch out of the Refrigerator, Dinner – Grilled Pork Chops, Apples, Onions, and Calvados, with shredded Brussels Sprouts, raisins, and pecans

February 3, 2016 Cooking Lunch out of the Refrigerator, Dinner – Grilled Pork Chops,  Apples, Onions, and Calvados, with shredded Brussels Sprouts, raisins, and pecans

I made lunch around 11:15. My first thought was to make a salad with the PPI salmon, but there was no lettuce, so I went to the garage and fetched a bag of spinach.  When I got back to the kitchen, I sliced four mushrooms and three slices of Stilton cheese.  I then looked in the fridge and saw PPI penne pasta and decided to make a hot meal.  I sliced one stalk of Palm heart, ½ tomato diced, two cloves of garlic.  I heated a skillet and added 1 T. Butter and 1 T. Olive oil.  I then added a handful of pasta, then the ½ lb. of salmon, about ten or twelve olives, mostly Nicoise, the chopped tomato and Stilton, the sliced stalk of Palm heart, the tomato, garlic, and about 1/4 cup of Mexican cottage cheese (regreson?).  The mixture was too dry, so I added ¼ cup of seafood stock, then filled the skillet to a slight mound.with the spinach with about 2 T. of Amontillado Sherry and covered the skillet.  I then added ½ tsp. of salt with herbs de Provence and stirred the mixture, which was now yielding juices to the dish.  After a couple of minutes, I sliced 2 green onions to give the dish some onion flavor.

I love dishes where the ingredients make the sauce.

I poured a glass of Chateau Le Hermitage, which was much better with this array of wildly contrasting flavors, actually settling them down a bit.

After lunch I drank a cup of coffee made by our new fancy Miele coffee maker with a few bites of chocolate torte with whipped cream.

Suzette arrived around 6:00. We began cooking around 6:30.  I had made a tentative menu of pork chops Sautéed with Apple and onion slices with a chicken stock and calvados sauce and sautéed shredded Brussels Sprouts with onions and sage.  Suzette decided to add golden raisins and chopped pecans, which made a lovely dish.

I drank the last of the Chateau Le Ermitage white Cotes du Rhone, which went rather well with the strong favors in the two dishes.

 

We ate some new desserts made by Chef Kelly, the new chef at the Greenhouse Bistro which were quite lovely.  I enjoyed a baked cheese cake with a liquor soaked crumble crust for dessert with Earl Grey tea.

Bon Appetit