April 23, 2017 New Recipe – Pecan Chocolate Crunch, Brunch – Salmon Smear Omelet, Lunch – Salad with Peter, Dinner – Mapo Dofu with rice

April 23, 2017 New Recipe – Pecan Chocolate Crunch,  Brunch – Salmon Smear Omelet,  Lunch – Salad with Peter,  Dinner – Mapo Dofu with rice

Pecan Chocolate Crunch

Suzette was in a cooking mood today.  She started cooking shortly after we awakened around 7:30 by creating a new confection she calls Pecan Chocolate Crunch.  She chopped about 2 cup of pecans, added several eggs and the PPI caramel and brown sugar mixture left from the Pecan Dreams Suzette made last Sunday which she spread on a piece of parchment paper and baked for 18 minutes in a preheated 375 degree oven.   The result was a gooey soft toffee-like crunchy mass of Pecans and caramel.  Suzette then melted tempered chocolate drops and mixed the melted chocolate with a bit of half and half to make a chocolate glaze that she drizzled over the baked sheet of Pecan Crunch.  See the photo below.

The result was fabulous, a gooey, sweet confection.

Then Suzette mixed cream cheese with the smoke salmon terrine made by Chef Kelly at the Greenhouse Bistro to make a salmon smear.  She made an omelet with whisked eggs, chopped fresh dill and lovage and the salmon smear. I ate my half of omelet with cHai tea and toast spread with blackberry preserves made by Shirlee Linder at Londer Winery years ago.  Suzette her usual Bloody Mary.

I finished watching the Sunday morning news show and Peter Eller called to say he was coming by to pick up some Baumans and Klosses left on approval at noon.

At 11:30 I started preparing lunch by doing a tomato, 1/3 onion and 1/3 cucumber.  Peter arrived punctually at noon and I finished the salad by adding lettuce and Spanish anchovies.  We decided to make open faced cheese sandwiches of Cypress Grove aged goat cheese from Costco on Jewish rye bread baked by Pastian’s.  We ate outside in the garden.  For dessert we ate a few pieces of Suzette’s Pecan  Chocolate Crunch.

I bought a print of an Adobe Brick Maker by Kenneth Adams from Peter and said goodbye to Peter around 2:00 .

I rested from 2:30 to 3:30 and then rode to Rio Bravo and back.

Suzette was home  when I returned.

I rested for a few minutes and then drove to Lowe’s to buy a poblano Chili, vanilla ice cream, a 12 pack of Rolling Rock beer, and tonic water.  I began cooking at 5:30.

Mapo Dofu

I made 1 ½ cups of rice and then diced the poblano chili, 1/3 onion, two zucchinis, 1 medium eggplant, and three boneless pork steaks.  I also diced 2T. of fresh ginger and Suzette diced 2 T. of fresh garlic.  I also soaked five dried shiitake mushrooms and 1 ½ T. of black wood ear slices in hot water.

I started by stir frying the pork, garlic, and ginger in a large wok with 2 T. of peanut oil.  I the removed the pork and most of the ginger and garlic and stir fried the vegetables for about 20 minutes until the vegetables softened.  I added 1 T. of Chinese cooking wine and 1 T. of mushroom soy sauce and 1 tsp. of sesame oil while the vegetables were cooking and made about three cups of chicken broth and diced 11 oz. of medium tofu.

Then I added the pork back to wok and added the tofu and chicken stock.  I added the wood ear and removed the hard stems from the mushrooms and sliced them and added them and stirred the mixture and cooked it another fifteen or twenty minutes.

I added 1 T. of mushroom soy, 2 T. of Chinese Cooking Wine, ½ tsp. of sesame oil,  and 2 T. of cornstarch to the 2 cups of liquid I had soaked the wood ear and mushrooms in to make a thickening sauce.  I also added 1 T. of Oyster Sauce to the mixture in the wok.

About five minutes before we were ready to eat, I stirred the thickening sauce into the mixture.  I occasionally stirred the mixture to see if it was thickening.  At this point you can adjust the thickness.  If if the sauce is coagulating, you can add water or some other liquid to loosen the sauce.  The easiest way to thicken the sauce is to keep cooking the mixture which is what I did tonight.

Another five minutes of cooking produced a consistent, well integrated sauce.

We each scooped rice into pasta bowls and piled scoops of the mixture on top of it.  We drank a beer with dinner.

Willy had arrived and queued up about five episodes of the Silicon Valley series on HBO Go.

We enjoyed the evening watching TV with Willy.

Bon Appetit