I slept until 7:30 after blogging for two hours in the middle of the night.
I watched the morning talk shows until 10:00. Suzette wanted to try to replicate the amazing appetizer we ate at a small bistro in Montmartre in September. According to our waiter it was an egg, a T. of cream, and a few pieces of foie gras baked until the egg congeals. It was delicious.
We were not sure whether to mix the cream with the or to add them separately and then add the foie gras.
We decided to do four ramekins, two each whipped and unwhipped and sauté the remains roasted fingerling Potatoes.
The whipped egg and cream rose like a soufflé and was stiffer, while the unwhipped did not rise and was creamier.
The sautéed fingerling potatoes
We drank a bottle of my current favorite Gruet champagne, the 2012 Vintage Blancs de Blancs. It is smooth with a nice finish and 100% Chardonnay. A truest elegant wine.
We carried our glasses of champagne to the basement to toast the successful completion of the boiler installation.
Aaron called to say that Monika preferred beef steak to lamb chops, which I had predicted, so I fetched four frozen ribeye steaks from the garage freezer and started thawing them. He asked if there was anything they could bring, I requested corn chips.
We were still in a cooking mood, so I cleaned and halved a bag of Brussels sprouts and a diced a red onion and a Suzette tossed the vegeatables with olive oil and salted and peppered them and roasted them in the hot oven she had used to bake the eggs.
We also decided to cook beans in the duck stock we had made last week, so I boned the duck carcass, Suzette checked and selected an assortment of Moriarty beans, and then we filled the bean pot with beans and duck stock and meat.
At around noon Suzette went to work and I lay down and finished my book club book, A Gentleman in Moscow and a Bloomberg article on the steps being taken or not taken to control China’s overheated economy.
I dozed for a bit but when I awakened at 2:00 I decided to rode my bike. I ate two sugar tablets and put two additional tablets in the pocket of the shirt I wear to ride. I have anew short circuit. I ride to the Country Club on Park Ave. and through the passage to Tingley Dr., then north on Tingley to Central where I enter the bike path and ride south past the zoo to Marquez, where I turn around and ride back north to the house.
When I returned home at around 3:30 I drank a cup of coffee hot Chocolate infused with a teaspoon of cocoa and a shot of rum. I watched the last quarter of the All Star game and then Last Samurai with Tom Cruise.
Suzette returned home at 4:00 and I took my shower and dressed for dinner at 5:00.
When I returned to the kitchen Suzette was hard at work prepping the cauliflower couscous and steaming the sugar snap peas, which she combined and sautéed.
We had three baked Yukon gold potatoes, which Suzette sliced and sautéed eight slices of potato.
She also set the table in front of the fireplace and while I made a Béarnaise sauce with herbs Provence instead of tarragon, Suzette converted the two large avocados into guacamole for which I minced about 1 ½ T. of shallot, by adding lime juice and minced fresh cilantro.
Suzette seasoned the thawed steaks with salt and pepper and put them on a aluminum cookie sheet into the fridge.
Aaron amid Monika arrived at 6:15 with a large bag of organic blue corn chips. We put the chips into a bowl and served the guacamole with it and opened a bottle of Gruet Brut to drink.
We sat in our living room for the first time since Christmas Day while secretly relishing the fact that the front zone in our house is a uniform 65 degrees.
We were so excited, we showed Monika and Aaron our new boiler, which Monika recognized as being a very high quality German boiler.
We also viewed the wine cellars and discussed a wine for dessert and settled on a bottle of Gruet Pinot Noir Sauvage, which I took to the fridge to chill.
Suzette then grilled the four ribeyes on the propane grill. When they were grilled we covered them with aluminum foil for a couple of minutes to let them concentrate their juices and keep cooking a bit while we opened a bottle of 2010 Wellington Mohrhardt Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon, which Aaron poured.
I then sliced three of the steaks because the first two were medium and the third was medium rare.
Suzette plated the plates with a pile of the cauliflower Couscous and sugar snap pea mixture and then a slice of potato on which I lay two or three slices of steak and then another sliced of sautéed potato on which I lay several more slices of steak to create a sort of steak and potato stack, which she the drizzled with Béarnaise sauce.
I must admit that it was a pretty impressive plate of food.
Suzette extended the Western theme by using her Frankoma ware green wagon wheel dishes and ceramic glasses with the hand made steel knives and forks for the meal.
We sat in front of the fireplace and enjoyed our dinner.
After dinner I spooned pieces of cold blueberry Clafoutis into small bowls and Suzette garnished them with a small dollop of Reddi Whip whipped cream. I brought the whipped cream to the table so those who wished could add more whipped cream. Aaron opened and served the Sauvage and we enjoyed the 100% Pinot Noir zero residual sugar champagne with the fresh fruit Clafoutis.
After dinner we took a short tour of the art collection and then around 9:00 we said goodnight.
Monika seemed to like her dinner, so I was happy. After Aaron and Monika left, Suzette said she was tired and wanted to go to bed leaving the dishes for the morning.
I bagged the meat and Suzette put up the rest in containers.
By 9:30 we were on our way to the land of nod.
I woke up at 2:00 and remembered that that is when I usually awaken after a big steak dinner.
I drank a glass of water and blogged and waited for my stomach to quiet.
I could not help checking Bloomberg News and my enthusiasm for a big day in the Market indicated by a 236 point future posted Sunday morning was dampened considerably when I saw the futures and oil had gone negative on the news that China’s industrial production numbers had worsened even though the US government shutdown ending was good news.
Bon Appetit
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