August 12, 2018 Lunch – Bacon and Eggs and toast. Dinner – Cedar Plank Grilled Teriyaki Salmon and Asparagus with Tomato Couscous

August 12, 2018 Lunch – Bacon and Eggs and toast. Dinner – Cedar Plank Grilled Teriyaki Salmon and Asparagus with Tomato Couscous

I ate a bowl of granola, yogurt, sliced banana, blueberries, and milk for breakfast while I watched MC beat Arsenal 2 to 0 and the Sunday morning news shows.

While Suzette worked in the garden at 11:15 I went to Sprouts to buy an Atlantic farm raised salmon filet on sale for $7.99/lb.  I recently read in Bloomberg Businessweek that the Norwegian coop that raises much of the fresh salmon has recently deployed a new deep water salmon growing facility costing over $1 Billion dollars.  So salmon seems to be entering the ranks of a sustainable fish.

I also bought sesame seeds, 1 pint of cream, green beans, and a gallon of milk.

When I returned home around 12:15 I made teriyaki sauce and washed and dried the salmon filet and placed it in a gallon freezer bag and marinated it.  I have developed a simple recipe to make 1 cup of teriyaki sauce which is enough to marinate one salmon filet weighing 1 ½ to 2 lb. I heat 1/3 cup each of soy sauce, Mirin, and sake and add 1 T. of sugar.  Just before the mixture comes to the boil I stir it to make sure the sugar has gone into solution and then turn off the heat and let the teriyaki cool a bit before pouring it into the freezer bag with the fish.

After putting the freezer bag with fish and teriyaki into the fridge I went to the garden and turned the dirt in another of the beds.

We stopped gardening at 1:00 and made lunch.  She fried 6 pieces of bacon.  I sliced 6 blue potatoes and 2 oz. of Vidalia onion that Suzette fried into country fries. Willy arrived as Suzette was fInishing cooking, so she toasted three slices of toast and five eggs, so there would be a slice of toast and an egg for Willy.   I filled a cleaned tea ball with Earl Grey tea and Willy and I made fresh mugs of Earl Grey tea and we ate a hearty brunch of bacon and eggs and buttered toast spread with peach butter.

I then lay down and Willy and Suzette roto-tilled the third raised bed, in which we will plant our winter/spring crop of lettuce in the next two weeks.

When I got up at 4:30 Willy had left. I decided to make Clafoutis. I heated the pint (2 cups) of cream with 1 ¾ cup of half and half to scald it.  I then thinly sliced three peaches (2 yellow and 1 white) and added about 12 oz. of blueberries to the bowl of fruit and added to the bowl about 2 T. oz. each of cognac and Grand Marnier for a total of about five cups of fruit.

I then measured 10 T. of flour, 12 T. of powdered sugar and ½ tsp of salt into a mixing bowl and stirred the mixture to homogenize the ingredients.  I then whipped four eggs together (I should have used 5 as I did for the last recipe) and poured the egg into the dry ingredient bowl and whisked the egg into the mixture and then strained the scalded milk into the mixture and whisked the mixture until smooth.

I buttered and sugared a ceramic baking dish and the another Pyrex baking dish for fear that the fruit and batter would exceed the limit of the ceramic dish.  As it turned out it did not and this was an error because the Clafoutis turned out to be rather thin.

We poured batter and fruit into the two buttered and sugared dishes and baked them in a pre-heated
oven at 350 degrees for 50 minutes until their centers were firm to the touch and a sharp knife blade
inserted into the center of the custard came out clean.

I put the Clafoutis into the oven at 6:05 and we then began our dinner prep.  We decided to grill asparagus with the salmon and make tomato and mushroom Couscous.  Suzette is avoiding rice and pasta, but for some inexplicable reason still eats Couscous.  Suzette snapped about fifteen stalks of asparagus and chopped two freshly picked tomatoes from our garden and I cleaned the rough ends of about 2 oz. of white beech mushrooms and three cloves of garlic.  Suzette then started grilling the salmon and asparagus but soon the grill ran out of propane gas, so she finished cooking the asparagus in the oven with the Clafoutis and sautéing the salmon skin down in a large iron skillet. While I made the Couscous.  I melted 2 T. of butter in a sauce pan and added the tomatoes, garlic, and mushrooms to sauté and soften.  I heated water in the electric tea kettle.  When the mushrooms, garlic, and tomatoes had absorbed some butter and softened I then added 1 cup of Couscous and 1 2/3 cup of boiling water to the pan and about 1 tsp. of fresh tarragon and cooked the mixture at low heat for five minutes.  I stirred the Couscous and found it to be still wet, so I heated it at low temperature for another 2 minutes to build steam again and then turned off the heat.

The normal recipe for Couscous is to use 1 ½ cups of water to 1 cup of Couscous and to not apply extra heat, but I find that this produces a tougher undercooked Couscous, so I add a little extra water and heat it a second time to make sure the Couscous fully absorbs the steam.  I check its progress after five minutes and fluff it and adjust the heat and cooking time to make sure all the Couscous is fully cooked and fluffy.

Suzette blackened the salmon skin by sautéing the filets, so she removed the flesh from the skin when she served the fish on a pile of Couscous with some baked asparagus, but I found the skin to still be delicious with its layer of fat and bits of flesh and ate some after the meal.

We heated a pitcher filled with sake and I made a cup of green tea to drink with the meal.

Although both the teriyaki salmon and mushroom, garlic, and tomato Couscous was superb, the real winning dish was the asparagus that had been first grilled and then baked in the oven.  The asparagus had a slightly Smoky flavor and were tender but crisp when bitten into.  They were perfectly cooked.  A disaster (no gas) turned into a triumph.  A newly discovered Bobby Flay style of grilling and then baking asparagus.

I had the feeling that we had become so accustomed to this perfect recipe of grilling teriyaki marinated salmon on a cedar plank that it had lost its amazement for us but I can not think of a better way to cook salmon.

The Couscous was also perfectly cooked and the addition of fresh tomatoes, beech mushrooms, garlic, and tarragon added variety and additional flavor to an otherwise quite bland dish.

Another really good meal.

Willy returned from his dinner with friends at Il Vicino at 7:00 and sat and talked during dinner.  After dinner Willy left and we ate some of the cherry and peach Clafoutis and watched the PBS Masterpiece Theater Series,  Poldack, set in the 1790s until 10:00 and then an hour of Ms. Fisher, an Australian series, featuring a flapper detective of the 1920’s.

Bon Appetit