I ate granola, milk, yogurt and blueberries for breakfast after letting the yogurt turn the milk into a light yogurt.
I went to podiatrist at 10:30 and at 11:15 to Trader Joe’s where I bought 12 bottles of wine, a Valreas Cotes Du Rhone, two French Sauvignon Blancs named Bella’s Vignes, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc named Picton Bay, one or two Perrin Famille Reserve whites, two Cherry Blossom Pinot Noirs, an A to Z Pinot Gris from Oregon, a Ferme Julien rose, a Carayon Rose, and one two more.
I then met Robert Pidcock for lunch at East Ocean. We split and order of Fried Tofu and Mixed Vegetables and talked a bit about legal stuff. Robert was instrumental in getting the state legislature to adopt new regulations protecting folks from unscrupulous lawyers who were forcing older folks into guardianships and stripping them of their money. I wanted to take him to lunch to congratulate him for getting the abuse addressed.
After lunch I thawed a steak and worked for a while and met with Etienne.
Then at 3:40 I rode south but the bike path was blocked by a police car at the Bridge street underpass so I turned around and rode north to Central and then back home. I cleaned and poked holes in six small russet potatoes and put them in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Then I made mango salsa.
I diced a mango and the last oz. of a red onion, and a small avocado and three small cloves of garlic into a bowl and added the juice of a lime and a few dishes of Cholula hot sauce, and salt and chopped about ¼ cup of fresh cilantro leaves.
Then I sliced two shallots and three cloves of garlic and went to the garden and picked about ten sprigs of fresh thyme and de-stemmed the small stiff leaves and chopped the tender leaves and stems. I then sliced six mushrooms. It was 6:30 so called Suzette and she was on her way home. So I cut the hard part off the seven huge stalks of organic asparagus we had bought at Sprouts last Saturday and put the tops in a freezer bag ready to be seasoned and grilled and the bottom of the stalks in a sauce pan filled with water to see if I could make a cream of asparagus soup with them and turned on the heat to simmer them.
I then went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2010 Wellington Morehardt Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon. Suzette arrived about ten minutes later. She sat for a few minutes to have a cocktail and catch her breath. I joined her sipping a glass of the Wellington Cab.
Then we started dinner prep. I took the pitcher of Béarnaise sauce from the fridge and placed it on the stove to come to room temperature. Suzette salted and peppered the steak and asparagus and coated the asparagus in olive oil. Then while she was grilling the steak and asparagus, heated 1 ½ T. of butter and 1 T. of olive oil in a medium skillet and sautéed the shallots and garlic. After a minute or
two I added the mushrooms and stirred them to turn and coat them in oil. After they cooked for a minute I added the chopped fresh thyme and stirred it in.
I then went to the dining room to fetch the decanter of Amontillado sherry and added 1 ½ T. of sherry to the mushrooms and reduced the heat to a simmer to cook them slowly in the liquid.
I then ran out to the garden and picked seven or eight stalks of chives and sliced them thinly for the potatoes. When Suzette brought in the grilled steak and asparagus, I poured glasses of wine and sliced the steak.
Suzette threw about half the sliced chives into the skillet with the sautéed mushrooms and cut open two potatoes and put pats of butter in them and heated them in the microwave for a few seconds to heat them. I put the crema and Béarnaise sauce on the table. Suzette placed a potato on each of our plates and three or four stalks of grilled asparagus and we served ourselves slices of steak and garnish them with sautéed mushrooms and garnished our potatoes with sliced chives.
When we sat at the table we garnished our potatoes with crema and our asparagus with béarnaise sauce. This was a truly elegant dinner in the French tradition of saucing each dish. Three dishes, meat, asparagus, and potato, each with its own distinct sauce. We did not even touch the mango salsa.
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| The crema and Sauce Bearnaise and butter |
We enjoyed the meal tremendously with the superb wine, but the star of the meal was the asparagus. I have never bought such large asparagus. After Suzette grilled the asparagus, she wrapped them in foil and they must have kept cooking and steamed inside, because they were mote tender and succulent than any other asparagus I have ever eaten. I am going to Sprouts tomorrow and buy some more of the organic giants. They are the sequoias of the asparagus family.
The wine was dark and slightly tannic. It seemed to have lost some of its youthful fruitiness. After dinner I poured out the rest of the bottle and cut and sliced the edges off two wedges of a fresh wheel of brie to eat and then we tried a chocolate truffle with the last sips of wine. Wellington no longer exists. It was located at Glen Ellen, just south of Santa Rosa and Morehardt Ridge is at he top of the coastal range of mountains between Sonoma Valley and the ocean.
We each drank to excess because of such an elegant meal and finished with a sniffer of cognac and another chocolate truffle.
Bon Appetit
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