November 11, 2017 Lunch – La Choza. Santa Fe Art Auction. Dinner – Sandwiches and Salad

November 11, 2017 Lunch – La Choza. Santa Fe Art Auction. Dinner – Sandwiches and Salad

I started the day by eating a bowl of granola with poached Quince, milk, and yogurt.

Peter and I planned to go together to the Santa Fe Art Auction, which is Gerald Peters’ annual art auction of New Mexico and Western Art.

Peter arrived at about 10:30 and we drove to Santa Fe.  I suggested eating lunch at La Choza, which is the sister restaurant to The Shed.  We arrived a little before noon and were seated in the new tented annex area beside a space heated which kept us toasty.  I ordered my usual, ground beef enchiladas with double posole and red sauce.  Peter ordered the same, but with posole and beans.  The red Chile sauce at The Shed and La Choza is a unique adaptation of the classical French cream sauce with a cooked roux and then liquid, except the recipe combines oil and red chili instead of butter and flour and then uses tomato juice to emulsify the sauce instead of milk.

Here is the recipe:

The red chili sauce was really picante and Peter ordered sour cream, which he shared with me and I ordered a Negra Modelo to calm my stomach and suppress the heat.

When we finished lunch at around 12:45 we drove to Gerald Peters Gallery to view the art and attend the auction.  The gallery was converted into the auction seating space in the large gallery with food in the smaller front gallery and drinks and an overflow seating area in the other large gallery.  The over 250 pieces of art were hung and displayed around the considerable gallery space.

We stayed for the entire auction and I bought several pieces of art.

We finally left around 6:00 and stopped across the street at Kakawa for a small 3 oz. cup of chocolate.  Refreshed, I drove us back to Albuquerque in less than an hour.

When we arrived I turned on the TV and we watched OU destroy TCU’s football season 38 to 7 in the first half.  TCU held OU to no points in the second half and scored twice but it was too little too late and TCU lost 38 to 20.

I made a salad with thin slices of sweet onion, and diced 2/3 of a cucumber and a tomato plus a handful of romaine lettuce.  I revived our Cesar dressing with juice of ½ lemon and about 1/4 cup of olive oil and washed off about six or seven salted anchovies filets.

Then I sliced and toasted and buttered four slices of sourdough wholewheat Cloud Cliff bread and buttered four slices of WASA knaeneke brod  and put out the Brie cheese, peppered salami, several slices of Gravad Lax and onion and the tube of Kalle cod fish roe.  I served Peter a bottle of Fat Tire Beer and I drank the last of the bottle of Alero Spanish rose’. Plus some marinated cracked olives and mustard for the salami.

We watched football and ate and drank until the end of the TCU vs. OU game.

I served us each a bowl of poached Quince garnished with whipped cream, which Peter said he had not eaten since he lived in or visited Europe.

After a long day of intense art, and a lot of good food he said goodnight.

Peter shares my belief that Scandinavian open faced sandwiches constitute a perfectly adequate meal and it was fun to share that belief in action with him.

Bon Appetit