I went with Peter Ellen to lunch at East Ocean at 3601 Carlisle NE. Peter ordered my old favorite from before I stopped eating rice a month ago, Scallops in Lobster Sauce with fried rice and sweet and sour chicken. I ordered my new favorite, Moo Goo Gai Pan, which is strips of chicken stir fried with seven or eight vegetables and served in a thickened soy and chicken stock seasoning sauce. At $5.95 there is no better luncheon dish in Albuquerque. I really think I could eat it every day or at least several times per week.
Suzette worked until after 7:00, so when I returned from meditation at 7:00 I put the four sweet potatoes we had bought at Sprouts on Saturday into a 375 degree oven. Suzette arrived soon after and took over the cooking and took them out after 45 minutes when they were fully cooked.
I had stopped at Lowe’s on the way home and picked up a bunch of spinach, a bottle of Gordon’s gin, and a couple bottles each of tonic water and club soda.
I wanted to cook Catalan Spinach, but Suzette vetoed that idea by offering a simpler solution of simply re-heating the PPI Roasted Pork Tapa and adding spinach to it and then serving that combination over a split buttered baked sweet potato to make a one dish dinner.
I agreed immediately when Suzette said she was not willing to cook Catalan Spinach, which is a complicated dish and de-stemmed ½ of the leaves in the bunch, which Suzette then cleaned and spun to dry.
When the Pork dish was re-heated we added ½ cup of additional chicken stock and Suzette raised the heat to drive off some of the liquid and reconstitute the sauce. We then added the spinach and covered the skillet with the wok cover to steam the spinach. When the spinach was cooked in just a few minutes, we added 1 T. of cognac to flavor the dish and it was ready to be poured over a split sweet potato that had been buttered. Viola, a quite easy dinner with delicious healthy ingredients, if a bit non-traditional.
I decided I wanted to drink a Spanish Rose with this very Spanish dish so I opened a bottle of 2015 La Granja Rose, which along with La Ferme Julien may be the best Rose' values in Albuquerque. la Ferme Julien is an exquisite Southern French rose made by Famille Perrin, which is the largest producer in the Rhone Valley. Perrin makes many good wines with Rhone grapes, including the great Chateau de Beaucastel from a Chateau Neufchâtel Du Pape, but this rose is their entry level offering and a very pleasant wine and a great value for $5.99 at Trader Joe's. If you want a Chateau de Beaucastel, it is available at Total Wine but last time I checked it was around $100.00; a bit out of my single bottle range.
La Granja is even cheaper at $4.99 and also available at Trader Joe's. It has a much deeper red color and is fruitier and fresher tasting. Your preference will depend upon whether you like a fresher fruitier wine that will remind you of koolaid because it is 100% Grenache or a more complex wine with higher acidity that will make you pucker a bit as it goes down and has a hint of French elegance, perhaps because it is a blend of Cinsault, Syrah, and Grenache grapes.
Bon Appetit
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