January 4, 2018 Lunch – The Kosmos. Dinner – Seafood Soup
Today I was distracted again by the surging stock market that added another 150 points to the Dow as it surged through 25,000, completing a 5,000 point run in less than a year, with no end in sight. Of course this run will end but it is impossible to see when or how.
To give a concrete example, I usually hope for a 10% gain per year. Last year was a surprisingly good year. When many portfolios experienced gains of more than 20%, my portfolio grew 16.5%, perhaps because I had converted over 10% of my portfolio into cash, wrongly thinking Trump would explode the economy. In comparison, having reinvested 7 or 8% of that cash into the market, during the first three days of 2018 my portfolio has grown over 2%, or more than 20% of my expected annual gain.
Enough of all that. My stomach was still queasy when I awakened later than usual at 7:42, I watched the market open in bed for a few minutes and then ate my usual bowl of granola, blueberries, yogurt, and milk, letting the milk mix with the yogurt to turn the milk into a light yogurt sauce.
I reconciled a billing for a client to get an accurate billing summary and talked to Scott for a bit and then showered around 9:30.
Jon came at 10:30 and we worked until 11:30.
I then called Peter Eller and he graciously invited me to lunch at Kosmos with a young painter named Adam Bustamante, who Peter was trying to advise, saying, “The Kosmos has reopened this week and we should try it.”
So I drove to The Kosmos at noon and met them in the parking lots they were arriving.
I immediately liked the cleverly redesigned interior lighting that Peter informed me had been done by David, who was one of the original creators of Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. Peter introduced me to Jerry, who owns the restaurant, and soon David came to the table to say hello. Kosmos is in the large working and living studio space at 1715 5th St. NW, Albuquerque. I assume David has a studio in the studio complex next to The Kosmos, because he walked through a door into the studio area after leaving our table and because The Kosmos is filled with clever lighting treatments that seem to have grown organically in the space.
Peter also pointed to the old walk-in refrigerator located next to the bar where barrels of beer are kept that feed the lovely copper taps on the bar side of the refrigerator. There are several other handcrafted copper accents, such as the rim of copper laid into the top edge of the bar.
We were provided menus and water. Peter said he liked their fish and chips, so I ordered that which is served with homemade cole slaw and tartare sauce and fried potatoes. Peter raved about David’s Afghan rice so I asked that it be substituted for the chips. “No problem,” was the waitress’ response. Adam ordered a hamburger.
Soon the waitress placed a basket filled with two largish cod filets hand battered and deep fried to golden brown with a pile of Afghan rice and a small steel ramekin of fresh cut cole slaw and a ramekin of fresh homemade tartare sauce. It took a while to eat my way through the basket of food, because it was very tender and delicious and needed to be savored with the addition of an extra ramekin of tartare sauce.
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| Adam’s hamburger |
We talked Art, but for some inexplicable reason I was distracted and probably seemed weird as I tried to work my new I Phone to capture images of art I was referencing.
In summary, I loved The Kosmos’ atmosphere and food. A happy New Year surprise, Peter paid for lunch, which was not cheap; the fish and chips was $14.95, but worth every penny of it.
I went home and decided to try to convert the Cream of Vegetable Soup Suzette made a few days ago that we ate last night into a sort of Bouillabaisse/French seafood soup because our immediate and strong impression when we ate small bowls of the soup last night was its overpowering garlic flavor and its heaviness. Diluting the soup with wine and seafood and fish stock would take care of both problems.
So I made a call to Willy to request that he bring two salmon mfilets and the remaining baguette that I bought him at the newly opened Le Madeleine Bakery in the Uptown area.
Then I called Suzette and told her my idea and mentioned the need for bread also.
I then put a bottle of 2015 New Zealand Station Cross Sauvignon Blanc (Trader Joe’s $5.99) into the fridge to chill and thawed out a bag of shrimp.
Willy brought two salmon filets and the remaining baguette at 5:45 on his way to a 6:00 meeting.
Suzette arrived a little later with a freshly baked loaf of French bread from her Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery at the Center for Ageless Living.
I had brought in the large pot of Suzette’s soup and placed it on the stove. We discussed the course of action.
Suzette said, “We need to dilute the soup.”
I responded, “Bouillabaisse usually is a wine and fish stock based soup.”
Suzette then asked, “Do we have any wine?
I replied, “We have the 1996 Black Opal Chardonnay in a pitcher in the fridge.”
So Suzette scooped 4 cups of soup into a large Le Creuset casserole on medium heat on the stove and added the two cups of Chardonnay.
Suzette then said, “The Soup is still too thick. We need some chicken stock.”
I replied, “We have fish stock.” I fetched the dehydrated dashi and Suzette made two cups of it by dissolving 2 tsp. of dashi concentrate in 2 cups of hot water, which Suzette added to the soup.
This produced a rather thin soup. I then added 12 frozen large heads off but shells on shrimp to the casserole of soup and cooked them until they turned fully pink. I then removed them and shelled them and cut the shrimp in half to make them bite sized and added them to the soup.
While I did that Suzette diced the 2 salmon filets and added the salmon to the soup and then selected about 12 deep sea scallops that I had bought at a Sprouts yesterday on sale for $9.99/lb. and cut them in halves and added them to the soup, which was now beginning to fill the casserole.
Suzette said, “The soup does not taste right.” I tasted it and suggested salt and white pepper, which she added.
It was about 6:45 by now and I asked if Suzette wanted to add some fresh spinach to the soup and she said, “Yes.”, so we de-stemmed a couple of cups of fresh spinach (Costco $4.29? for 2 ½ lb.) and added it two the casserole just as Willy was walking into the house.
I poured glasses of a Station Cross and Suzette sliced and toasted slices of the fresh French loaf from the Greenhouse Bakery. She the laid the croutons in the bottom of a pasta bowl and then filled the bowl with soup. The soup was lovely and tasted a lot like Bouillabaisse. I had been much improved by liquefying it with wine and fish stock, which also reduced its intense garlic flavor to just the right level for our taste.
Suzette loved the Sauvignon Blanc, so I will buy more. It had a noticeable citrus flavor but also has rich tannins.
After dinner I ate some of the PPI baked chocolate pudding from a Christmas covered with Creme Anglais and a cup of tea.
Bon Appetit
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