I met Aaron for lunch today at East Ocean. I had my usual; Moo Goo Gai Pan without rice with sweet and sour chicken. Aaron ordered chicken Lo Mein with sweet and sour chicken and liked the Lo Mein a lot. Lo Mein is one of the best dishes offered on East Ocean’s lunch menu.
After lunch I drove to Sprouts and bought pork ribs for $1.99/lb., a green bell pepper for $.50, zucchini and yellow squash for $.98/lb., asparagus for $1.88/lb., a whole filet of fresh Atlantic farm raised salmon for $6.99/lb., three onion at 3 lb. for $.99, a head of romaine lettuce, 5 or 6 vine ripe tomatoes for $.98/lb., a small head of cabbage, two eggplants for $2.50, and a gallon of whole milk for $2.49. My idea was to make a dinner of teriyaki salmon with the salmon, a dinner with the chicken breasts with a cream sauce and ratatouille with the eggplants, bell pepper, tomatoes, onions, and squash
I bought extra squash so I could make fresh steamed and sautéed sliced squash and onions like we ate at The Range Monday night as a vegetable side dish.
When I got home I was tired after unloading so I read Wyoming vs. Colorado in bed until 4:30 and then went to the bank. When I returned Suzette was at home but had had a busy day and was resting in front of the TV and gracious enough to have turned on the business news. I made teriyaki sauce and then cut the salmon in half and placed it in a gallon freezer bag with the teriyaki sauce.
Teriyaki Sauce – 7 T. each of soy sauce, Ali Mirin, and sake plus 1 T. of sugar
I fetched five sweet potatoes and the last five Yukon Gold potatoes which Suzette washed. I peeled and diced the potatoes and 1 onion and placed them in a Pyrex baking dish and handed it to Suzette, who added olive oil and seasoned and tossed the potatoes and placed the potatoes in a 350 degree oven to bake.
I then sliced five white mushrooms and minced 6 small cloves of garlic and about 1 oz. of onion and put them in an enameled sauce pan with three T. of butter. It was 5:50 by then, so I went to meditate.
When I returned a little after 7:00 I went to the garden and picked small handfuls of tarragon and thyme.
I removed the leaves from the stalks and put the thyme in the mushroom sauce pan and the tarragon in a large cast iron skillet a Suzette fetched. Suzette joined me in the kitchen and assumed her usual cooking duties. She put butter and olive oil in the large skillet and when the butter melted added the three large chicken breasts and weighted them down with a smaller skillet filled with water to sauté them in what we call the Bobby Flay method, since he was the first chef we saw use this method to crisp the breasts and cook the more quickly. It is the same as brick cooked chicken.
I snapped 18 stalks of asparagus while Suzette fetched the steamer and filled it to basket level with water. After adding the asparagus to the steamer I added another 3 T. of butter to the mushrooms, thyme, and onion and sautéed those ingredients until tender. I then added 2 T. of flour and 1 tsp. of salt and two dashes of white pepper and sautéed and broke up clumps of flour for a couple of minutes. Then I added about ¼ cup of white wine and then about 1 cup of milk until the sauce liquified. Suzette then took over and stirred the sauce until it thickened and then added some asparagus water to thin it to a proper creaminess.
Wily arrived and helped Suzette add lemon juice to the chicken. We discussed wine choices. Suzette suggested one of the chilled bottles of Gruet Tamaya Rose’ we had bought at the Gruet tasting room in Santa Fe on Monday with Rebecca. Justin and the server told us, “These are the last two bottles of this wine available from the winery.” I felt lucky and honored and sad, all in the same moment.
The Tamaya Vineyard is a joint venture between Gruet and the Santa Ana Pueblo. It is a 23 acre vineyard and as far as I know raises only Pinot Noir grapes. Richard of Milagro Winery told us he set up the vineyard and he gets some grapes from it, but Milagro’s rose’ is entirely different from Gruet’s. Richard seems to blend some other grape juices with the the Pinot Noir and the result is Milagro’s rose’ is heavier, even leaden, compared to Gruet’s which is light, clean tasting, and elegant. Gruet’s Tamaya Rose’ is comparable to a fine Rose’ from Bandol, France.
I initially poured Willy a glass of the Dreamer red from last night and asked him if he liked it. He did. We told him we were trying to see if it appealed to millennials. He thought young people would like it.
Them we tested the chicken to see if it was thoroughly cooked and it was so. Suzette had made two deep incisions into each breast to hasten their cooking, so I simply extended the incisions through the two breasts cutting them into thirds and placed two thirds on two plates and 1/3 on Suzette’s plate. I then poured glasses of Gruet Tamaya Rose’ while Suzette plated the plates with potatoes and asparagus and sauced the chicken with the mushroom cream sauce.
I added a bit more sauce to my plate because I like it on my potatoes and even asparagus.
This type of mushroom cream sauce flavored with garlic and thyme is one of my favorite sauces. The other variation of this sauce I love is the same ingredients; mushrooms, garlic, a little onion or shallot, thyme and flour and butter emulsified with fish or crab or lobster stock and a bit of white wine and cream instead of milk and wine. You can see from the addition of some of the asparagus cooking water how flexible the emulsifying liquids can be.
After dinner I ate a piece of chocolate and a glass of cognac with a dash of Grande Marnier in celebration of a great dinner.
Remember my definition of a great dinner is good dishes of well prepared ingredients and a good wine. Tonight’s meal more than met my criteria. Everyone expressed satisfaction with the meal and Willy even took a second glass of rose’ when offered, which is a rarity.
This evening’s meal also shows how one orchestrates a great meal through the assemblage of ingredients by shopping, then prep, and cooking, into a finished meal with a proper wine of good quality. It takes a bit of time and energy but the result is rewarding.
As you can see the shopping and prep time and effort can be spread out over a long enough period of time so as to not to interfere with other activities, which also minimizes the time spent in the kitchen doing the final prep and cooking. I guess that Suzette and I spent about ¾ hour of final kitchen time making this meal. Of course we had prepped and prepared the potatoes ahead of time and started roasting them at 6:00, so they would be roasted by 7:00, which was when Willy said he would arrive.
Bon Appetit
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