March 27, 2017 Lunch – PPI Vietnamese Miso Noodle Soup,  Dinner – New Recipe – Catalan Chard with PPI Teriyaki Ali Tuna and Penne Pasta in Sorrel Sauce

Breakfast was biodynamic yogurt, fruit salad, and granola.  I call it biodynamic when there is enough liquid in the fruit salad to moisten the granola without the addition of milk, which typically occurs on the first day after it is made due to the extra lime juice.

Lunch was PPI Vietnamese Miso Noodle.  I added some water to loosen up the exercise expanding volume of noodles.  The soup actually tastes better to me on the second or third heating after all the ingredients have had a chance to fully cook and exchange their respective flavors.  This is particularly true for the tofu begins to take up the flavors of the mushrooms and other ingredients after a bit of cooking.

March 27, 2017 Lunch – PPI Vietnamese Miso Noodle Soup,  Dinner – New Recipe – Catalan Chard with PPI Teriyaki Ali Tuna and Penne Pasta in Sorrel Sauce

Breakfast was biodynamic yogurt, fruit salad, and granola.  I call it biodynamic when there is enough liquid in the fruit salad to moisten the granola without the addition of milk, which typically occurs on the first day after it is made due to the extra lime juice.

Lunch was PPI Vietnamese Miso Noodle.  I added some water to loosen up the exercise expanding volume of noodles.  The soup actually tastes better to me on the second or third heating after all the ingredients have had a chance to fully cook and exchange their respective flavors.  This is particularly true for the tofu begins to take up the flavors of the mushrooms and other ingredients after a bit of cooking.

This is not an original idea.  Michael Pollen in his book, Cooked, mentions it in his section on water.

New Recipe - Catalan Chard with Tuna and Penne Pasta

For dinner, we had talked to Willy and he had asked for a dish with less meat, so I decided to make the Catalan Spinach tapa from Jose Andres Tapa Cookbook and add the approximately ½ lb. of PPI Teriyaki tuna from last night’s meal and the PPI Penne Pasta from several nights ago.

This would allow us to do a one dish meal with a variety of ingredients including, fruit, a vegetable, a protein, and a starch.

Suzette and I went to the garden at 5:30 and picked a large basket of chard, which is growing really well in this cool Spring weather.

Suzette de-stemmed the leaves and washed the pieces in a bath of cold water in the sink.  I cubed a Granny Smith apple and Suzette fetched the Indian raisins we had bought at Bombay Spice Store on Central.

When Willy arrived at 7:00 we began cooking.  I cut the tuna into ½ inch cubes.  The basic recipe is to sauté the raisins, apples and piñon nuts and then add the spinach, which is what Suzette did.  The raisins were dehydrated and dry, so I added about 2 T. of Amontillado sherry to the skillet with the raisins and apples to rehydrate the raisins.  After a couple of minutes of sautéing when the raisins absorbed some of the sherry and softened, Suzette added the piñon nuts and sautéed the three ingredients until the Nuts began to take on a golden brown color.  Suzette then added the cleaned, chopped chard to the skillet and covered the skillet with the wok cover to steam the ingredients.

While the chard was steaming, Suzette added 2 heaping T. of PPI Sorrel pesto to the freezer bag containing 2 cups of cooked PPI Penne Pasta and microwaved the bag until hot and then put the bag of pasta and pesto into a stainless steel bowl to keep warm enough to keep it steaming.  After a few minutes of steaming Suzette poured the steaming pasta into a large bowl, added the cubed PPI tuna and the added the skillet of steamed chard, apple cubes, piñon nuts, and raisins and a bit of salt, and tossed all the ingredients together. I sliced Pecorino Romano cheese for garnish and poured glasses of 2014 Gruet Still Rose, which is 100% Pinot noir and delicious with the fruity dish.



We all loved the simple but complete one dish dinner of PPI ingredients.  This is the essence of our style of cooking.  We combined Japanese teriyaki tuna, with Italian Pesto pasta, into a Spanish tapa dish to enhance all the flavors and drank a flavorful French style wine that complemented the flavors in the dish. It really does not get much better than this for us and it all got cooked in about twenty minutes after the chard was picked and cleaned and chopped.

Willy loved it and said, “I will come more often for this type of food.”

Unfortunately this type of a meal is the result of a linear progression of two former meals that created the PPI ingredients for this meal in a rather random order, namely the pasta to go with the fresh sorrel pesto Suzette made last weekend and the ski tuna I bought for $7.99/lb. on sale at Sprouts and marinaded in teriyaki sauce and seared yesterday to accompany Suzette’s garlic Eggplant dish that created the PPIs to create this new dish.  It is unlikely to be recreated again, but who knows, it was wonderful enough to repeat it again.

Bon Appetit