July 29, 2018. Brunch – Dungeness Crab Salad, Dinner – Grilled Ribeye Steak with steamed green beans and baked potatoes.

July 29, 2018. Brunch – Dungeness Crab Salad, Dinner – Grilled Ribeye Steak with steamed green beans and baked potatoes.

I woke up this morning at 6:00.  Suzette slept so I decided to prep our planned Dungeness crab brunch.

I started by finely dicing a large shallot and covering it with the juice of ¾ lemon.  After letting it sit for an hour I fetched three sprigs of tarragon from the garden and stripped the larger leaves and chopped them and added them to the shallots plus about 1 cup of mayonnaise.  After a bit I tasted the sauce and added a tsp. each of olive oil and white wine vinegar.  I chilled the sauce.

I then fetched the 1.65 lb. crab and cleaned it and placed it on a plate in the fridge.

I then chilled a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rose Champagne from Chouilly, France that was so graciously given to us by Pierre.

 I then assembled the salad plates by laying leaves of baby romaine lettuce on one side of the plate and adding steamed asparagus, sliced tomato wedges, and cucumber fingers on the other.  Suzette got up around 8:30 and sliced a large avocado and added slices of avocado to the plates. At 10:00 she filled one of our new ice buckets with ice and water and placed the chilled bottle of champagne into it.

After the news programs ended at 10:00 we carried everything to the garden table from which we
could watch the fish swimming in the pond and the garden.  Here is a picture of our brunch table.

We spent a pleasant hour liberating crab from its shell and eating lettuce wraps filled with avocado, crab, tomato and sauces we sipped champagne.

  The champagne had a lovely nose and lovely small bubbles.  The most interesting thing about the champagne bottle was the pink wire used to hold the cork in place. Here is a photo of it.

After lunch we walked to our favorite fig tree in the neighborhood and harvested about 30 figs.  When we returned home, Suzette said she wanted a Fig Clafoutis so she sliced the figs in half and drizzled Grand Marnier on them and put them in the fridge to brandy and then I took a nap.

At 4:30 I got out of bed and Roasted 6 russet potatoes at 350 degrees for 46 minutes.

While the potatoes were baking I made the Clafoutis with 2 cups of heavy cream and 1 cup of half and half that I scalded until the milk came to a boil.  I then mixed 10 T. of powdered sugar, 7 T. of flour, and ½ tsp. of salt in a bowl.  I then whipped 4 eggs instead of the usual three eggs and added them to the dry ingredients and then added the cooled scalded milk.

I buttered and sugared a ceramic baking dish and added the batter and then the brandied figs and baked the Clafoutis for about 50 minutes.

The result was even more impressive than the fully integrated Cherry Clafoutis I made last week.  This Clafoutis was richer, more homogenous with a more delicate flavor from the fresh figs and rose higher, probably due in part to the fourth egg.

Then I de-stemmed the rough ends from the green beans I had bought at El Super on Wednesday and Suzette seasoned the two thawed ribeye steaks.  She then grilled the steaks, while I steamed the green beans.

I went to the basement and found a bottle of Wellington Field Blend red wine in the cooled wine cellar and opened it.  I also went to the garden and picked about seven or eight chive stalks and sliced them and put them in a bowl and fetched the crema sin sal (sour cream from El Super for $2.29/lb.) from the garage.  When the steaks were ready and the beans steamed Suzette heated two potatoes and placed one on each plate and we served ourselves beans and slices of steak.

Everything was delicious. The meat and beans did not require any sauce and we put butter, sour cream, and chives on the potato so there was plenty extra flavor in the potato.

After dinner we each ate two portions of Clafoutis and when Endeavour ended at 9:30 we went to bed.

This is the best Clafoutis I have ever made.  I can not believe that after all these years I have discovered the secret of enriching the milk and egg components to create a rich integrated custard.  I should have guessed when the recipe said the richest milk in France was from the Limousin that one needed to enrich the milk with cream, but I didn’t for years.  Finally, the recipe is working the way I want it to.

Bon Appetit