I ate a bagel spread with cream cheese and topped with slices of my homemade Lax and four capers and a cup of green tea in my new favorite tea cup for breakfast. Here is a photo.
I picked Suzette up at the airport at 11:0 and we went home, but Loyda was still cleaning so we decided to go out for lunch. We drove to Le Troquet and took a window table. Soon chef/owner Jean Pierre came out and greeted us. We chatted for a while and then he went back to the kitchen, after admonishing the waitress, "Take care of them. He is very special. He is both an attorney and a food critic.” I never thought I was special, but liked the compliment.
We are still trying to stay on our diet, so Suzette ordered a beet salad ($8.95) and I ordered a small house salad (6.95) and a Pate’ Maison ($10.25). The pate' was two thick slices of homemade pate' campagne served on a rectangular platter with a small green salad with lovely paper thin slices of red onion on one side of the pate' and on the other side a pile of cornichons and seeded kalamata olives, and a small mound of French seeded mustard. The dish was served with a plate of toasted slices of baguette. We enjoyed our lunch. It reminded me
of lunches we enjoyed during trips to France. We had to work, so we avoided the almost obligatory glass of wine. I love Le Troquet and recommend it for those who want an authentic French Bistro meal.
I have known Jean Pierre for the 36 years I have lived in Albuquerque and he was cooking great French food before I even moved here at Comme Chez Vous. When I moved here in 1981 Jean Pierre owned Le Crepe Michel Bistro in Old Town. Then Casa Vieja in Corrales and Le Marmiton and finally Bistro Jean Pierre. His restaurants have always served impeccably authentic French cuisine.
I really enjoyed our lunch.
At 3:00 I went to the post office and El Super supermarket to buy cucumbers (4 for $.99) , plus a container of yogurt for Tzatziki. Suzette was at home when I returned a bit before 4:00 and we rode 5 miles south. Then we went to Costco at 5:30 to buy a leg of lamb and Clorox clean up, plus two bottles of Gruet Rose Brut champagne, a wedge of cambozola, a wedge of Manchego and a small 500 gram wheel of French Brie.
We decided to use the PPI salmon from Wednesday’s dinner to make a salad with the living greens
Bibb lettuce we bought at Costco over a week ago for dinner. We pickled strips of cucumber and
carrot in a bowl of Japanese rice vinegar with a dash of sesame oil. Suzette added some roasted eggplant to her salad and made lovely salmon wraps. Here is a picture.
Still hungry, I made Baba Ghanoush with the eggplant I had roasted last
week. Willy had brought his bottle of tahini last night so I had all the ingredients. It used more lemon juice and olive oil than I had suspected but we finally had something we thought tasted good. I realized that the eggplant and tahini are just the binder for the flavor components, which are the
garlic and lemon juice. We ate some by dipping stalks of celery into the baba ghanoush.
While I made the baba ghanoush, Suzette made poached pears with the four Bartlett pears I had bought at El Super last week for $.59/lb.. I went to the basement and found a bottle of Smuggler’s Cove Rose’ from Belen that was not as red or as sweet as we would have wanted, so after failing to find red food coloring (the missing ingredient), Suzette added some ruby port to the poaching medium. She kept the Pears intact but cored each to remove its seeds and peeled the skins away from the fruit leaving the Pear whole and its stem intact. She said she made a snowy covering with a mixture of sour cream and cream when she made poached pears in E town for her family this week.
I am interested to see how this turns out. She is adding a new dish to her repertoire.
It was fun to be together again and shopping and cooking together
Finally, I told Suzette I was still hungry and she said, “You have not eaten the chicken dish I made before I left.” I immediately found it in the fridge and heated about a cup of it with about ½ cup of PPI rice and ate it with a small glass of red Bordeaux wine. The chicken dish was a combination of chicken, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms in a cream sauce, so I added a little half and half to loosen the sauce and broke up the rice wedge. Finally I felt full and happy after microwaving and eating some solid food.
We went to bed sometime before 10:00 as I dozed off blogging and Suzette's two hour time differential from the East coast caught up with her.
Bon Appetit
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