September 14, 2016 Lunch – Ming Dynasty. Dinner – baked Eggplant Provençal with a Spaghetti and garlic bread

September 14, 2016 Lunch – Ming Dynasty. Dinner – New Recipe, Baked Eggplant Provençal with a Spaghetti and garlic bread

A breakfast of granola, yogurt, a dash of milk, and blueberries.  Then a ride to Rio Bravo and back.

I left for lunch at 11:30.  I had two appointments in the far Northeast Heights, so I decided to eat DimSum at Ming Dynasty, Albuquerque’s only DimSum restaurant.

I was shown to a table covered with a green linen tablecloth and given a green linen napkin, which excited me to begin with.  I asked for the DimSum menu.  It took me while to decide.  My first choice was easy, steamed buns stuffed with BBQ pork for $3.20.  My second choice was harder.  There were two shrimp dumplings.  I ordered the.dumpling filled with shrimp and garnished with cilantro for $3.20.

Then I tried to find something I had never eaten before and settled on pork Porridge for $3.90.

I also ordered tea and a tea pot was brought with fresh tea leaves in it, another plus, especially for $.70.

Soon my dishes were served along with chili sauce.  

I ate some porridge and then a shrimp dumpling and finally a steamed bun after dipping it into a mixture of soy and chili sauce.  Then remembered to take pictures.

  The steamed buns

  The Pork Porridge

  The restaurant looking at the kitchen

  The bottom of a steamed bun sitting on a small late of soy mixed with the chili sauce in which the bub will be dipped

I enjoyed each of the dishes and would order them again.  The pork porridge was particularly interesting because it had small chunks of Thousand Year old egg in it.  This may be the first dish I have ever eaten with Thousand Year old egg and I liked its gelatinous firmness and egg flavor in the porridge.

I then went to the Ayurvedic Institute for an examination and dietary recommendation, so soon my diet will change a bit as I try the Ayurvedic path to health through diet.

Then I returned home.

Suzette was running late and I had to go meditate, so we invited Willy to join us for dinner at 8:00.  At 5:00 I ate the PPI bowl of Miso Pho Noodle soup to tide me over to dinner.

When I returned home at 7:45 from meditation, Suzette had started the dish.  She had gathered a handful of fresh basil leaves, was heating a pot of water for the spaghetti, and had sliced an eggplant.  She then found the PPI Spaghetti sauce in the fridge and put it on stove to re-heat band sliced the last ball odd fresh mozzarella and several tomatoes from her garden in Los Lunas.  

She then assembled the dish in a ceramic baking dish which she had coated with olive oil by coating each side of each slice of eggplant with olive oil and then stacking basil leaves,slices of tomato, and slices of mozzarella cheese on each slice of eggplant and arranging the slices in the baking dish so the toppings were not overlapped.  She then baked the eggplant in the oven at 350 degrees for twenty minutes while the pasta was boiling.  

Suzette drained the pasta at 8:00 and we waited for Willy.

I decided to make garlic toast.  I heated 1 T. of butter and 2 T. of olive oil in a large skillet and pressed three cloves of garlic into the oil.  Then I sliced five slices of French bread and brushed them on both sides with the garlic infused oil and lay them in the remaining oil in the skillet and toasted them on medium heat until Willy arrived at 8:15.  I then opened a bottle of.    Aquino Chianti Riserva and poured three glasses of wine while Suzette plated the pasta and scooped spoonfuls of spaghetti sauce on top of the pasta and then lay several slices of eggplant Provençal on the side of each pile of pasta and we each took a slice of garlic bread.  Willy loves garlic bread, so he ate the two extra slices.

We watched TV and talked until 9:30 and then said goodnight.

This was a hardy and quick meal because Suzette did not batter and fry the eggplant slices and because the spaghetti sauce was a PPI.  Baking the eggplant slices stacked with a slice of tomato and fresh mozzarella  instead of frying makes this exactly like my mother's dish she called Eggplant Provençal, except we improved upon mother's dish by the use of fresh mozzarella instead of the regular semi-hard mozzarella and we added fresh basil leaves fora it of green and herbal flavor.

It was really a quick assemblage and bake.

Bon Appetit