Dinner - Ratatouille and grilled Lamb Chops
We decided to fried eggs and bacon for breakfast. Suzette sautéed potato and onion into cottage fries. I ate a slice of the Cloud Cliff whole wheat bread I bought yesterday smeared with the last of the peach butter.
At 10:00 we drove to Costco to shop. Besides all the utilitarian items, we bought half and half, cream, lamb chops, a smoked whitefish, Bibb lettuce, mushrooms, and olive oil.
We then drove to Sprouts where we bought Italian sausage, a 1 lb. package of ground veal, a red bell pepper, celery, milk, and lots of asparagus for The Greenhouse Bistro.
We went home a little after 1:00 and I made a seafood soup that was quite delicious. I heated about two quarts of water and added a heaping Tsp. of instant dashi flavoring, ½ medium onion diced and a cup of old undrinkable rose cooking wine. Suzette added a stalk of celery diced. I then added small pieces of three kinds of fish, Rockfish with garlic cream sauce, salmon, and haddock plus 8 or 9 each of heads on shrimp and mussels, a mushroom diced and about 1 cup of rose wine and about 8 or 9 basil leaves sliced. Suzette went to the garden and picked some sorrel, chard, and lovage and chives and sliced the chives and washed the vegetables. I also added a heaping T. of red miso.
Finally at 2:00 we added the vegetables and soon were eating the soup. The soup was fabulous. Fish soup is best when it is fresh. This soup had fresh salmon, frozen haddock, frozen mussels and shrimp, and cooked Rockfish, but somehow all their flavors blended with the broth and wine to create a lovely aromatic and tasty blend of flavors.
Here is a picture.
I awoke around 5:30 as Dallas was winning 40 to 7. At first I thought I was having a dream of Dallas as the super efficient Super Bowl team that it used to be, but then realized that Dallas may have invigorated it ranks, especially its offensive line to the point that it had a potent offensive attack, i was thrilled.
I wandered back into the kitchen ready to make ratatouille for dinner.
Suzette had made a lovely tomato sauce for the stuffed sweet pepper dish we will make tomorrow night with spaghetti squash from her garden at the Center with the ripened heirloom Roma tomatoes we bought at the Farmers’ market yesterday. She let me taste a spoonful and I loved it. It was indescribably full of the flavor of sun ripened tomatoes at their zenith of maturity.
I was still sore today and although Suzette had just finished a craft project for the Greenhouse Bistro, a cleverly ornamented image of a Christmas tree advertising the gifts being offered for sale at the Spa, so she agreed to help me make the Ratatouille.
Working together the dish was finished in record time. I chopped the regular eggplant and two zucchini I had bought at Sprouts last Wednesday and the Italian Rosa eggplant we bought yesterday at the Farmers’ Market, and two onions from El Super, the large red bell pepper I bought at Sprouts yesterday, and a large head of garlic from our garden while Suzette cut the kernels from an ear of corn and went to the garden and picked fresh oregano and chives and chopped and added them to the large Le Creuset casserole in which she was sautéing the vegetables in olive oil.
The onion, zucchini, and chives sautéing
The joy of good Ratatouille made at this time of year when all the ingredients are at their most flavorful maturity is that they blend their flavors into a stew that has a unique taste without the addition of any salt or other seasoning. That is what we made.
We decided to grill 1 lamb chop for each person, so Suzette picked the three largest lamb chops from the package we bought at Costco today for $7.99/lb. leaving 5 for a future meal. The lamb chops had a bit of marbling in them, probably because it was spring lamb. It is spring in Australia. The flavor of the lamb was excellent. I highly recommend that you go to Costco and buy some lamb at this time. It will be the most flavorful of the year, since the sheep are loading up on all the Spring’s tender new growth of grass. Suzette heated the PPI rice and put a pile of rice in a pasta bowl, them spoonfuls of Ratatouille, and finally the grilled lamb chop.
I opened a bottle of 2013 Famille Perrin Reserve ($8.99 at a Trader Joe’s) Cotes Du Rhone, which is a blend of 50% Grenache and 50% Syrah from the Rhone Valley in Southern France and we tasted it. It was smooth and full bodied, a wonderful wine for the price made by one of the most prominent Rhone producers. This s their second level, the lower grade wine Ferme Julien and there are two or three higher grades, such as Chateaunuef de Pape, with Château Beaucastel being their flagship. Chateau Beaucastel is recognized by many as the most complete expression of a Rhone wine. Beaucastel blends all 13 designated Rhone grape types into a feathery smooth super complex richly integrated wine. It would be my choice for every lamb dish, except that it costs over $100.00 per bottle.
When Willy arrived at 7:00 I fetched a new bottle of Reese’s mint jelly (Talin?) and Suzette grilled the lamb chops and we ate one of our favorite fall meals as we watched our favorite TV series, PBS’ The Durrell’s in Corfu.
Willy left at 8:00 after the show and we then watched the PBS Masterpiece Theater presentation of Poldark, an English period piece set in early 19th century Cornwall.
At 9:30 we went to bed. I blogged a bit and the slept like a rock until 5:30, when I finished this blog.
Enjoy the glories of this season with its best vegetables and meats.
Bon Appetit
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