We discussed whether to make banana pancakes or banana bread this morning. We decided to make banana bread for breakfast with the bunch of blackened bananas. Sometimes I think I buy bananas to let them darken so they will be the perfect ingredient for banana bread.
We watered the garden while the banana bread was baking. When it finished baking we cut thick slices of it and smeared Irish butter on them. I also dabbed the buttered warm bread with lemon curd.
Suzette drank coffee and I drank hot French tea with mine.
Suzette went shopping at Lowe’s and I drafted an agreement until 1:30, when we decided to eat the rest of the Lamb Pot Pie made for Suzette by Chef Kelly at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery at Suzette’s Center for Ageless Living.
We heated the lamb pot pie, fetched Belgium beers and jellied cranberry sauce from the fridge and ate our first meal of the year at the table in the gazebo in the garden.
After lunch Suzette painted the cabinet doors in the garage and I worked with Roland to install the new HP printer I bought.
When we finished the installation a little before 5:00 I addressed dinner issues.
I wanted something other than lamb stew for dinner and decided on Crawfish etouffee because we had all the ingredients except a bell pepper, so I took the pound of crawfish I had bought at Nantucket Shoals ($17.95?) out of the freezer and then drove to El Super where I bought a lovely big, ripe red bell pepper for $.89, plus more Lala mango yogurt on sale for $2.50 for 32 oz. and a pound of 31-40 count shrimp for $5.79/lb.
When I returned home Suzette had awaken from a short nap and we began cooking.
We use Paul Prudhomme’ Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook recipe foe Crawfish Ettoufe. Here it is.
The recipe is easy the way we have adjusted it. Instead of ¼ cup of each vegetable, I just dice 1 cup each of bell pepper, onion, and celery, which are then cooked in a golden brown roux made with canola oil and flour and added to a pot in which the crawfish and 1 cup of thinly sliced green onions are cooked in stock. Today we had lobster broth from the lobster tail and shells from our meal last Saturday at Chez Mamou. Today we decided to cook about 1 ½ cups of peeled and diced eggplant with the crawfish, green onions, and stock, which made the cooking time about 40 minutes longer to allow the eggplant to soften, but made the dish infinitely more delicious. I have bought 4 eggplants in the last week at Sprouts because they are on special for $.50 each.
Even slightly undercooked, the eggplant added a wonderful additional dimension to the dish and solidified its vegetable components into a symphony of flavor. We loved it. We let the dish continue to cook and in about thirty minutes after we had eaten our first helping piled over reheated PPI basmati rice with a Belgium beer, it tasted even better because the eggplant had released some of its juices into the dish, which made the etoufee smoother and creamier. This is a dish that only gets better as it sits, although you may need to revive it with a little chicken or fish stock when you reheat it.
After dinner we watched a movie called Joy about a woman who is gifted with creative genius for inventing and selling inventions of others on QVC who perseveres in the face of opposition by a dysfunctional family to make success in her life. It may be a real story of Joy Magano, the person who created HSN. The all star cast was superb. Jennifer Lawrence played the lead, for which she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy/musical for 2016, and the cast included Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen.
Suzette opened the 1 lb. box of Enstrom almond toffee that Mary Lou Dobbs sent me for helping her with a business matter. I wonder how Mary Lou knew that almond toffee was one of my favorite candies.
We stayed up for SNL and finally went to bed at midnight after a wonderful day of food and activity around the house. If the new normal is to stay at home I am ready for it.
Bon Appetit
No comments:
Post a Comment