April 21, 2018 Breakfast – Lax, Spinach, and cheese Omelet, Lunch – Artichoke, Pea, Red Bell Pepper, Paprika, and Blood Sausage Tapa. Dinner – Los Poblanos Restaurant
A very pleasant day of creative food. We started with a simple Lax, Spinach, and cheese Omelet that Suzette cooked beautifully so the crust was crisp while the inside was tender and cheesy.
We went to Goodwill after breakfast where I found a lovely Armani casual shirt. We then drove to Gruet at 11:45 and tasted some wines. We settled on three bottles of the newly released Still rose that is a blend of the pinot Noir from Gruet’s Pinot vineyards at Tamara and Truth or Consequences. It is a little darker, heavier in fruitiness than the Tamaya of last year, but still richly Pinot flavored. The sales person who helped us stated, “there was a smaller harvest of Tamaya, so to make a commercial amount the two grape batches were combined..”
We also took 2 bottles of 2012 Vintage Blanc de Blanc, my favorite.
When we returned home we worked in the garden. Suzette worked on the pond and birdbath and weeded the old garden and I weeded the new garden.
At 2:30 I picked a basket of lettuce and Suzette made a lovely version of the tapa we discovered in northern Spain several years ago. The original version had the advantage of being made with always available ingredients; artichoke hearts canned in water, canned pimiento peppers, frozen peas, saffron and Serrano ham (which s probably found in every kitchen in Spain) sautéed together.
In Today’s version Suzette substituted red bell pepper for the canned pimiento pepper and blood sausage (El Super for $4.99/lb.) for the more expensive and difficult to find Serrano ham and used Sprouts olive oil, which is Spanish olive oil.
We cleaned the lettuce and laid a pile of it in a pasta bowl and then added the sautéed tapa from the skillet for a lovely warm salad.
I then napped for an hour and then at 4:30 showered and got dressed for the symphony at 6:00.
The program was just okay. The violinist was wonderful, as was the Ravel piece he played but I did not care for Holst’s The Planets except for the last one Neptune, with the low non-verbal female chorus that was truly otherworldly.
After the concert we drove to the newly opened Los Poblanos restaurant. It is designed to look like a barn and fits into the design elements of the existing structures but it is all new on the inside with a state of the art open kitchen and separate baking area where bread is baked fresh daily.
This is farm to table meets gourmet at its best in Albuquerque.
We met Nancy and Cliff for dinner. Suzette and I decided to split a duck Rillettes and an apple cider vinegar brined pork chop with nettle spaetzle. Nancy ordered sautéed trout and Cliff ordered what was probably the most interesting dish of the night, Lamb Agnolotti (pasta wrapped around lamb Marquez sausage meatballs with pinons, radishes, and a sumac yogurt sauce), a very spicy Middle Eastern dish but super interesting.
The duck Rilletes were traditionally correct, wedges cut from the terrine with a mound of French seeded mustard, a few lovely slices of pickled carrots, cucumbers and pickles served on a platter with six or seven thin slices of grilled olive oil brushed fresh baguette. My favorite part of the dish were the thin wedges of fresh farm raised white turnip.
We tried three white wines and settled on a 2016 Martinsancho Verdejo from Rueda, a wine region
located on the upper end of the Duero River south of but near the Rioja wine district in Spain.
Here is some information from wine.com on Martinsancho and Rueda and Verdejo.
Martínsancho is Angel Rodríguez' 17th-century vineyard responsible for the preservation of Rueda's indigenous Verdejo grape. Cuttings from here were used in 1976 to establish a 25-acre vineyard planted in the traditional head-pruned fashion and dry-farmed. Low-yield Verdejo apports viscosity and a long finish while retaining a delicate floral nose.
Rueda is located along the banks of the Duero River in Spain’s Castilla y León region, just a 2-hour drive north of Madrid. While winemaking in this area goes back to the 12th century, it was in the 1980s that the region was granted Denominación de Origen (D.O.) status. Today, more than 70 wineries call Rueda home. This national favorite is the top-selling white wine in Spain.
Notable facts Rueda’s main grape variety, Verdejo, gets it distinct complexity from stressful growing conditions and mineral-rich soil. Think of Verdejo as a fuller-bodied and more aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. A lush and smooth character with perfectly balanced acidity means
The waiter kept pouring the wine without asking us if we wanted it poured, as if trying to force us to buy another bottle for the entrees. I did not care for this, especially since the wines were very expensive. The bottle of Martinsancho Verdejo cost $50.00, which is a pricy bottle of Rueda white, even when its suggested retail is $19.00. So the wine list appears to feature better quality wines at about 2 ½ times retail prices. I saw few bottles for under $50.00.
Nancy’s trout and our Apple cider Vinegar Pork Chop were more mundane cuts of meat but each of the dishes was dressed up with lots of interesting treatments and accompaniments. Nancy’s trout was stuffed with charred spinach and charred lemon and served with testy beans and locally grown asparagus and garnished with sesame and green garlic. Our pork dish was served with a very interesting spaetzle combining fresh stinging nettle tossed with fresh spring beans and lardons and
topped with a sunny side up fried farm egg with a swatch of fresh chimichurri sauce on the side. It was a very interesting dish. I liked the idea of adding a volatile accompaniment to the otherwise bland but comforting Spaetzle. I also was impressed with the brightness and spiciness of spices in the merguez sausage stuffing for the Agnolotti pasta dish.
When we finished dinner at 10:30 restaurant was nearly empty and kitchen staff was beginning to clean. We wandered back to the kitchen and talked to Executive chef Jonathan Perno, who was standing a5 the front of the kitchen. He freely shared his recipe for the merguez sausage and when I seemed interested that the baguettes were baked fresh daily, had one of the chefs wrap up one of the two or three remaining baguettes to take and gave me one of the baguettes.
It was a lovely finish to a lovely dinner. I feel like we have a new dining institution springing up in our midst and I love it. Again the Rembe’s show us how to do things right with the proper balance of money, tasteful design and a commitment to tradition.
The grand opening will be on June 20, 2018 with a special five course meal for $175.00.
Bon Appetit
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