I ate tropical fruit, yogurt, milk, and granola for breakfast, then went to meet a client, then stopped to at Costco to fill up, and get a flu shot. I also bought green beans for dinner, fruit for Suzette, a 3 lb. bag of roasted pistachios, and mushrooms. I then went to visit with Bill Turner and deliver him Marc Simmons book Spanish Administration in New Mexico. Bill has been talking about Spanish law, so he is perhaps one of a handful of persons in New Mexico who would enjoy reading this book.
I then went home and received a call from Marty who was nearby and wanted to talk about a matter so I invited him by. I then put together a plate of food to re-heat including a chicken thigh, a spoonful of Ratatouille, and the last of the cabbage with apples.
I ate while we talked and he add his wife, Tashy, nibbled on a bowl of the fresh pistachios. After they left at 2:30 I dozed off until 3:15 when Suzette called to remind me to start preparing dinner. I went to the garage and fetched the two pieces of chuck roast and vegetables I had bought yesterday at Sprouts (2 each of turnips, parsnips, and rutabaga).
I put 1 T. of olive oil into a large cast iron skillet and salted and peppered and then braised the two pieces of chuck roast ($4.99/lb. at Sprouts) for about 15 minutes per side until browned. While the meat braised I peeled and sliced two carrots and a large onion and added about 1 T. of olive oil to another cast iron skillet and sautéed the carrots and onion slices with two cloves of garlic for about 10 minutes.
I then fetched the large covered roasting pan from the basement and arranged the two pieces of meat that filled the large skillet together on the metal rack in the roasting pan and poured the sautéed onion and carrots over the meat and placed the covered roasting pan in a pre-heated 325 degree oven at 4:00.
At about 4:30 Suzette arrived and we turned up the heat in the oven to 350 degrees and she helped me prepare the vegetables. She peeled and diced two potatoes while I peeled and sliced two sweet onions. We then worked together, iI peeled the parsnips, rutabagas, and turnips and she diced them until we had a goodly quantity of vegetables.
At 5:00 Suzette removed the roasting pan from the oven and covered the meat with the vegetables and returned the covered roasting pan to the oven. I prepped the green beans and put them into the steamer. That was all the prep we did for dinner until Susan and Charlie arrived with a Sacher torte at 7:00 and Aaron arrived soon after.
Suzette opened the bottle of 2014 Diana, La Belle red Priorat to let it breath and I poured glasses of water and 2016 Remy Reichert Rose’ of Pinot Noir ($4.99 at Trader Joe's). As we waited for Willy Suzette steamed the green beans and made a brown gravy by making a roux of flour and butter in an enameled sauce pan and then adding the roux to the pan juices in the roasting pan after we removed the vegetables to a large ceramic bowl and the meat to a cutting board.
I sliced the meat and Suzette poured the gravy into a pitcher and Willy arrived and we were ready to eat.
We sat at the dining room table and served ourselves and poured glasses of red wine. Everything was wonderful. The meat was tender, the vegetables roasted to a golden brown but tender and the green
beans cooked but still crisp. The only odd thing about the meal turned out to be the wine, which had
been given to us at a wine tasting arranged by a French wine exporter that invited Aaron and me because we own an U.S. wine importing company. The wine, rather than being a hardy full bodied red, turned out to be a delicate fruity slightly sweet wine. Not at all unpleasant but decidedly different than what we expected.
After we all had seconds and talked about Charlie and Susan’s Viking boat tour of the Rhine and Danube rivers from Cologne to Budapest and lots of other things, we decided to eat dessert. Suzette made coffee and I made a pot of Lychee hot tea and Susan sliced her Sacher Torte and served it with unsweetened whipped cream she had made, as is the tradition. At about 1:45 Susan had brought over an article on the Sacher Torte she had printed from Wikipedia and the recipe she had used, which I read in the evening before dinner. The article revealed that the Sacher Torte must be one of the most heavily litigated dessert recipes in the world. Here is the story.
We finished dinner around 9:15 and said goodnight as everyone simultaneously became sleepy. After a quick clean up Suzette and I went to bed at 9:30.
Bon Appetit
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