December 18, 2017 Lunch – Mary and Tito’s. Dinner Party at the Palmers

December 18, 2017 Lunch – Mary and Tito’s. Dinner Party at the Palmers’

I had my first cheese bagel, which turned out to be pretty tasty, smeared with cream cheese and garnished with Lax, red onion, and capers.

Then went to a meeting and after the meeting Aaron and I went to pick up a shipment of wine samples from Romania.

Then we went to lunch at Mary and Tito’s.  We each ordered what we ordered last visit, a stack of three flat enchiladas with ground beef and an egg with red chili.  Aaron ordered the large combo with a ground beef taco, a chili Relleno, and a cheese enchilada.

We loved lunch.  Then we went to my house and tasted one of the Romanian wine, a biodynamic semi-dry rose’, that was delicious as we worked on VinDacia paperwork.

Aaron left a little after 2:00 and after checking on the market result for the day, I lay down but was interrupted by a call.  I rested until 5:30, when I gathered the items for dinner: a bottle of French Pinot Noir ($6.49 at Trader Joe’s), the poached pears, the pear sauce, nutmeg and nutmeg grater, broccoli, cauliflower, and Swiss and Manchego cheese.

At 6:30 I drove to Susan and Charlie’s house with the bag of stuff.

Shortly after I arrived, Willy arrived.  Willy talked to Charlie while I cooked with Susan.  She preparing the mashed potatoes and gravy, I preparing the vegetables and sauce Mornay.  I started by making a roux for a Béchamel sauce with 2 heaping T. of  flour and 3 oz. of butter. After cooking the roux for several minutes, as I cut broccoli and cauliflower flowerets off their stalks, I added milk until the sauce was the creamy consistency I wanted.  Then I added salt and white pepper and grated about ¼ tsp. of nutmeg into the sauce.  Then I grated about ½ cup of Swiss Gruyere and Manchego cheese and added that and stirred it into the sauce.  I stirred the sauce over medium heat to melt the cheese into the sauce and put it aside.  Susan helped me find a large vegetable steamer and we worked together to steam the cauliflower and broccoli flowerets (I cut the larger flowerets into two or three bite sized pieces).

The I started heating the pear sauce which was simply the poaching medium of 1 ½ cups La Granja red wine, 1 cup water, 1 1/3 cups sugar, 1 tsp f ground cardamon, 1 tsp. of ground cinnamon,  and an 8 oz. jar of Quince syrup that was a failed attempt to make Quince jelly.

Susan and I heated the pear sauce over high heat to drive of the moisture, while constantly stirring it.  At 8:00 I had to go fetch Suzette at the airport and we returned at around 8:30.  When we returned the pear sauce was a perfect consistency thanks to a Willy and Susan stirring and watching the sauce.

Susan made Julia a Child’s recipe for garlic mashed potatoes from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with an interesting twist she cooked and added black garlic that she had found a jar of in some store.

She whipped the potatoes and then cuisinarted the cooked black garlic and then began adding the garlic to the potatoes until she liked the flavor of the potatoes.  The potatoes were a tan color with specks of black garlic.

We poured out the Pinot Noir as soon as I poured Suzette a glass, so Susan offered a bottle of Vina San Pedro 1865 Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, which was a more full bodied wine than the elegant lighter bodied Pinot Noir.

The cab was fine with the roasted meat and potatoes.

Susan fetched a large ceramic bowl. I spooned the vegetables from the steamer basket into the bowl and added the Sauce Mornay.  Susan put the potatoes into another bowl and the gravy into a pitcher, we took our respective bowls to the dining table and I sliced the roast and served each person a piece.

It was a lovely dinner and it was wonderful to have Suzette back at home.

After we supped on vegetables, meat, potatoes and gravy, we rested for a few minutes.

While Susan and I cooked Charlie made vanilla ice cream.  Charlie is from Houston and his favorite ice cream is Bluebell vanilla, but due to a food poisoning in a batch of ice cream, the Bluebell ice cream factory was shut down and the contaminants removed.  The factory is raising its production levels, but has not reached the point of distributing in New Mexico again.  So, Charlie and Susan have bought an electric ice cream maker and found a recipe for a custard vanilla ice cream similar to Bluebell’s and make their own ice cream. Charlie removed the firm ice cream from the machine to a plastic container and placed it in the freezer to harden.

So we put out the poached pears and sauce and the container of ice cream, which we each easily scooped into our individual bowl. I served the pears and we passed the sauce pan of sauce around with a spoon to sauce the dessert.

Susan made and served tea.  It was a lovely finish to a lovely meal.  In fact it was just as distinctively Texas as the meal last night was distinctively Jewish.  Both were perfect from their own cultural and food perspectives.  I can no chose one over the other.  I was glad to have the food and cultural immersion into both.  If it is true that we are what we eat, it is equally true that what we are determines what we eat.

I would buy the Pinot Noir again but not the 1865 Cab because it was a little heavy for my taste which usually means that it is a blend of different hybrids and not a single field of one hybrid of one grape or perhaps the limestone cobbles in its field gave it a more earthy terroir.

Bon Appetit