November 19, 2017 Brunch – Poached Salmon with Spinach and Cream Sauce with Bulgar. Dinner at Cynthia and Ricardo’s Antipasto and Shrimp Scampi with Linguine

November 19, 2017 Brunch – Poached Salmon with Spinach and Cream Sauce with Bulgar. Dinner at Cynthia and Ricardo’s Antipasto and Shrimp Scampi with Linguine

I had a cup of coffee cocoa in the morning as I watched the news programs.  At around 10:00 we decided to poach the salmon filet I bought two days ago at Sprouts for $8.99/lb.  we decided to make a cream sauce with the poaching liquid.  Suzette made the poaching liquid with equal parts water and white wine, butter, garlic, and fresh thyme.  She salted and peppered the salmon filet and then poached it while I made a roux with 2 T. of butter, minced garlic, ¼ tsp. of freshly ground nutmeg, a dash of white pepper and salt, and a heaping T. of flour.  When the salmon filet was cooked Suzette removed it from the skillet in which she was poaching it and added the roux to the skillet with the poaching liquid and whisked it into the liquid to make a sauce.  As the sauce thickened Suzette added half and half and then filled the skillet with spinach and covered the skillet with a wok cover to let the spinach steam.  She put a couple of scoops of Bulgar in my pasta bowl and covered it with Saran and heated it in the microwave.  When the spinach was cooked I opened and poured glasses of Santiago Station Sauvignon Blanc and Suzette removed the skin and put pieces of poached salmon and spinach with cream sauce into pasta bowls.  I enjoyed the combination of salmon, spinach, and Bulgar all mixed together in a cream sauce.  The wine was a little over the hill and not very drinkable.

We then decided to inventory our wine refrigerator and then made an inventory of art in two rooms until the charge of the battery on the I Pad went down to about ten.

We rode to the nature center and back.  Then we showered and dressed and went to the Kimo for the past NM Jazz Worksop’s Calypso Christmas program at 3:00.

I had never heard of Frank Leto or Kirk Carter, but Cynthia and Ricardo had.  They were accomplished local steel drum players. Frank was the leader and M.C.  It was a lovely family oriented program with kid participation and his wife’s dance group dancing along to the vibrant calypso and a different Caribbean regional forms of music that were played.  It was a joy filled program of enjoyable music.  For example during several songs the dancers danced through the Kimo auditorium dispensing small plastic  bags with Christmas candy canes to the children.

When the show ended we drove to Cynthia and Ricardo’s and got a tour of their back yard with all the new plants and additions and improvements, such as an old wooden wine barrel sauna and wooden pathways and newly made doors and shelves in the newly constructed outdoor kitchen.

We then settled at the kitchen table and read cocktail recipes for a possible cocktail for our Christmas Eve buffet utilizing maple syrup and bourbon.  Ricardo, who is a rather good mixologist, made us a Manhattan with maple syrup instead of sweet vermouth to try out the concept.  It was tasty, but in this case I think he put to much Angostura bitters, which hid the maple syrup flavor.

While Suzette, Ricardo, and I were researching cocktail recipes, Cynthia was assembling a platter with black kalamata and green olives, salami, and Beverly’s garlic dip, a bowl of mushrooms Cynthia had marinated and a board with a Bosque Bakery baguette and a wedge of Greek fresh white farmhouse cheese.

After we drank the maple Manhattan, I poured the bottle of 2014 Aquino Chianti Riserva as we nibbled appetizers and talked.

Appetizers 

Then Cynthia began preparing dinner.  First she assembled a lovely bowl of salad of arugula, raddichio, Belgium endive, thin slices of red onion  and lettuce.  Then she boiled linguine and Ricardo squeezed ½ cup of lemon and zested the peel of one of the lemons for the shrimp scampi while Cynthia chopped a ½ cup of parsley and couple of cloves of garlic.

Cynthia then sautéed the shrimp in olive oil and added the lemon juice, garlic, and parsley for a quick finish to the dish.  After a Suzette took her portion of shrimp Cynthia added the linguine to the skillet and tossed with the shrimp and linguine to mix everything together and then served us plates of scampi with linguine.  We then moved to the dining room table.  I poured the bottle of Oregon Acrobat Pinot Gris and we passed the salad and had a lovely meal.

The Acrobat Pinot Gris was good but not great.  It like the Sainte Celine Chablis I also bought at Trader Joe’s last week.  It was representative of the grape, but lacked the extreme flinty, tannic flavor we really like in these two wines.  The unavoidable truth is that most serious wine drinkers prefer a balance of tannic minerality with soft fruitiness in their Chablis and Pinot Gris and Riesling and that is more reliably found in the more highly graded and priced bottles, such as Premier Cru in French wines. My favorite Oregon Pinot Gris is Elk Cove ( https://elkcove.com) with MacMurray Ranch second.

After dinner Cynthia put out a plate with 8 of the napoleons I had bought at Costco, bowl of vanilla ice cream and some Quince compote Ricardo had made with the Quinces Suzette gave them that he flavored with honey and raisins, which was quite nice.

Ricardo retired at 7:30 and we left shortly after, arriving home at 7:45.

I had a cup of tea with a sip of the Rusticator rum we bought at Bartlett’s Winery and Distillery in Maine this summer with a punch roller and Suzette had a cognac as we watched he season finally of Poldark.

Bon Appetit