October 8, 2018 Lunch – Vietnamese Miso Noodle Soup with curried chicken. Dinner – Poached Rockfish with spinach and sautéed corn in a mushroom and garlic cream sauce.
I was feeling better today. We made another chopped smoked pork cutlet, mushroom, onion, spinach, and cheese omelet for breakfast. I sliced the last of the Norwegian semi hard cheese we had bought in Oslo for the cheese component. It was a little harder and more aged than Jarlsberg and just a bit crumbly, so it imparted a darker more intensely aged flavor.
After breakfast, Suzette went to work and I worked for three or four hours on a Settlement Agreement for one of my cases and my 2017 taxes until 1:00.
Luke was home but working. He had gone to breakfast with Amy, so said he was not hungry. I decided to make lunch and then go shopping for food at Sprouts.
I made one of my favorite lunches, Vietnamese Miso Noodle soup. The basic ingredients are noodles (today I used all three types; rice stick, wheat, and mung bean threads), a Pho seasoning cube, red miso, seaweed, sliced mushrooms, and some form of onion and some vegetables. Today I diced some of the PPI chicken curry Luke brought home from Taj Mahal two nights ago with its curry sauce and some of the rice. I sliced and diced two slices of yellow onion and added about 1 tsp. of dried seaweed to a two quart sauce pan filled 2/3 full of water. I usually add things to the water to make it closer to a broth. When using seafood, I often add instant dashi, Chinese Cooking wine, soy, and Miso. Today, since my meat was chicken, I added Knorr dehydrated chicken stock, Chinese Cooking wine, Miso, the juice of a lime, and sweet and spicy crab sauce. I also threw in about 2 tsp. of pickled ginger threads and a large handful of spinach. The goal is to hide any watery flavor without destroying the character of the broth. Here is what the resulting soup looks like.
Luke joined me for lunch and we talked about some great ramen noodle restaurants he goes to in L.A. Luke liked the noodles and left his broth for me to finish.
We finished lunch at around 2:30. I checked my portfolio and felt good that the market started turning positive toward the end of the Day so instead of $15,000, I only lost $5,000. Let’s hope it keeps going positive.
At 3:30 I drove to Sprouts on Coors. The traffic was bumper to bumper from Old Town to 1-40 with Balloon Fiesta visitors and normal folks like me and Coors was full of cars also. Albuquerque appears to be becoming quite congested.
I am not at full strength so everything is slower and it took me 1 ½ hours to shop. I bought two fresh Rockfish filets for $7.99/lb., a tub of medium tofu for soups, Brussels Sprouts, a bunch of green onions, four bratwurst, a gallon of whole milk, 18 eggs, a ½ lb. ball of fresh mozzarella and three large hothouse tomatoes, a 5 lb. bag of russet potatoes, three ears of white corn for $.99, and black grapes on sale for $.69/lb.; enough ingredients for several day’s meals. The menu ideas were some kind of fish dish for tonight and a bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potato German meal and a Brussels sprout, mushroom, onion, and cheese casserole for another meal and a Caprese salad with slices of red onion and fresh basil leaves from the garden.
I stopped at Donut Mart but they had sold out of bagels, so I called Tahir and asked him to please make me six whole wheat everything bagels.
Suzette was at home when I arrived at 5:30. I lay down and Suzette took over. We discussed dinner. She suggested fish in foil, but since Neither Willy or Luke would be joining us for dinner, I requested poached fish in a garlic, mushroom cream sauce.
Suzette agreed and went back to the kitchen to make dinner magic.
Suzette called me after a bit and when I arrived I saw a skillet with cream and corn kernels reducing, another skillet with mushroom slices being sautéed, a skillet with the poached fish in its poaching medium and Suzette stirring a Le Creuset sauce pan with flour, garlic, and butter into a roux. Just another normal dinner prep.
After a few minutes Suzette set the fish aside and drained the poaching medium into the roux and
added the sautéed mushrooms and some half and half to the garlic roux to make the cream sauce, to
which I added a large handful of spinach leaves from which I had removed the stems.
I poured glasses of Gruner Vetliner and fetched silverware as Suzette plated the pasta bowls with fish, then Cream sauce, and finally the crunchy sautéed creamed corn garnish.
Suzette’s presentation was lovely. This is one of my favorite ways to prepare fish. We ate this dish at a small restaurant in the Latin Quarter just off Place de Preson as part of a fixe pris menu twenty years ago, where I fell in love with the dish. The flavor of the sauce was dramatically enhanced because instead of water, Suzette used fresh chicken stock she made yesterday from the chicken bones left after I boned the chicken. The key to the dish is the use of the poaching medium to make the cream sauce.
I loved dinner, although I am not well enough to have regained the full functioning of my palate. The addition of the sautéed corn kernels was a nod to my pigeon dish at Maize in Bucharest that was served with fresh corn kernels sautéed in yeast.
After dinner at around 7:00 I went to bed and slept until 1:00 and then blogged about the last two day’s meals until 3:30 a.m.
Thankful to back in our home and back to creative wonderful meals.
Bon Appetit
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