May 3, 2017 Lunch – Vietnam 2000.  Dinner – Fried Rainbow Trout with Roasted Potatoes and Steamed Asparagus

I left the house a little after noon and drove to Vietnam 2000, which was crowded.  I took a seat at my favorite table with a view of the Sandias over the Wells Fargo branch across the street.  I ordered my usual, No. 21, which is boiled rice vermicelli noodles on a bed of fresh lettuce, green onion, mung bean sprouts, julienned cucumber, and chopped cilantro and basil.  The bowl of noodles and salad is topped with a meat of your choice and fried egg rolls.  I always choose pork.

I could only eat half, so boxed up the rest and drove to Talin to shop.  Suzette had mentioned liking Trout, so I bought a nice 1 lb. rainbow.  The fishmonger asked me if I wanted the trout scaled and I discovered that fresh water fish have small scales, so I said yes.

I went a little crazy or bought a lot of things to restock the larder like dried seaweed, Swedish herring pickled in sherry, tofu, broad Vietnamese noodles and thin bean noodles, shallots, white beech mushrooms and fresh shiitake mushrooms, Pho seasoning cubes, beef broth cubes, a package of pre-cooked polenta, fish balls, beef balls,  and pad Thai noodles.

I then went to Sprouts, but they did not have anything I wanted except for chocolate covered raisins for $2.99/lb. and two medium avocados for $1.00.

I drive home and worked until 4:00 when I watched Jim Cramer interview Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

Todd called at 5:45 to tell me he had been called into work and would not be able to meditate, so threw on my bicycling clothes and road to I-40 in an increasingly strong head wind, which provided such a fast wind assisted return home that I felt like I was approaching Lance Armstrong’s cadence of turning the pedals 60 revolutions per minute.
When I returned home, I started dinner. I fetched the bag of PPI roasted mint potatoes and snapped the hard ends off 14 stalks of asparagus and put them into the steamer with a sufficient amount of water to steam them. Then I rinsed the 15 inch trout and dried it and removed its head and tail so it would fit into a large skillet.

Suzette took over at this point and filled a skillet large enough to hold the trout about ½ inch of canola oil and heated it.  She then put flour, salt and pepper into a gallon freezer bag and then the trout to coat the trout in the flour mixture.  Then she put the trout into the skillet of hot grease, turned the heat on under the steamer and put the bag of potatoes into the microwave.  After about ten minutes of frying the fish I tried to filet it by standing the fish up and running a sharp knife down its backbone.  When I did the knife met resistance and I saw that the flesh by the bone in the middle of the trout was not cooked, so we returned the trout to the skillet and cooked it for an additional five minutes, occasionally flicking hot grease into the cavity I had opened along the backbone to make direct contact with the uncooked flesh.

While the trout was cooking I made tartar sauce by adding pickle relish to the PPI dill mayonnaise sauce I made for artichokes, which Suzette and I love with fried fish.

We plated up the asparagus and potatoes and I successfully filleted and we worked together to lay the 12 inch Trout onto the 12 inch wide plate without it falling apart.

I drank the last of the Cotes du Provence Crayon Rose’ and Suzette drank a beer.

The trout was delicious, tender and yet flaky.  I particularly loved the crisp fried skin.  Another wonderful meal.

After dinner we went to the garden and inspected the trees, which were all doing well after last week’s rains.

Tzatziki

I picked a handful of dill and a smaller amount of mint sprigs as we walked through the garden.  When we returned to the house I de- stemmed the leaves of each and chopped them finely and put the chopped herbs in a medium steel bowl with a tsp. of salt.  I then peeled and diced a large cucumber, one Roma tomato, and about three ounces of red onion and put the pieces into the bowl.  Then I added about 1 cup of Greek yogurt, the juice of one lemon and one T. of olive oil and mixed the mixture into a thick sauce.  I then minced 3 small cloves of garlic and added stirred the garlic into the sauce.  I covered the tzatziki with Saran and put it into the fridge. I will adjust the flavors tomorrow when we have a PPI lamb dinner with Willy.

Tonight I discovered another very interesting thing when I had a few bites of tzatziki to taste it for flavor balance.  It seemed to satisfy my urge for dessert.  I then remembered our meal in Bourg en Brest at which Suzette was served yogurt for dessert, which the French call white cheese.  So a few spoonfuls of yogurt can be a helpful degustation after a meal in the French diet. I am committed to reducing the sugar in my diet and desserts with yogurt and a bit of fruit are the perfect answer because it helps settle my stomach and has less sugar.

Bon Appetit