February 26, 2018 Lunch – East Ocean. Dinner – Spaghetti with Bolognese Spaghetti Sauce with Caesar Salad

February 26, 2018 Lunch – East Ocean. Dinner – Spaghetti with Bolognese Spaghetti Sauce with Caesar Salad

Today the healthy living manifested itself by an absence of any breakfast, a light lunch and a semi-healthy dinner.

  I met Mike Verhagen at East Ocean at 11:30 and we ordered what has become one of my favorite lunches: Deep Fried Tofu with mixed vegetables and Manila clams in Szechwan Sauce and rice. There are two reasons why it is a favorite.  First, both dishes are delicious and the portions bountiful because we order dinner sized portions from the dinner menu.  Second, the prices are good, given the quantities. Both dishes total less than $18.00 before tax and tip.  The clams are the largest serving of clams I have found in Albuquerque for any price.  Also, I love the fried tofu with ten different vegetables; broccoli, snow peas, carrots, onions, bok Choy, baby corn, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, sliced  water chestnuts, and celery.

Here are pictures.

We drank tea with lunch.

After lunch I went home and worked until 4:40.  By 5:30 Suzette had arrived, so we started cooking.  I added tomato sauce  and some Clamato to the Bolognese sauce to turn it into a more liquified sauce. I then walked to the garden and picked a small handful of fresh oregano and chopped and added it to the sauce.

I then made a Caesar Salad.  I diced two heads of romaine from Costco which sells six heads in a plastic container for $3.99 and put in our large teak salad bowl.  I then sliced two types of cheese with a cheese slicer, an Italian Paradise and Pecorino-Romano, both from Costco and AOC designated.

I diced the last portion of a loaf of French baguette from Pastian’s Bakery and threw the pieces in a freezer bag that Suzette seasoned with olive oil, and salt and shuck to coat the bread pieces.  She then laid the bread pieces on a cookie sheet and baked them for ten minutes in the oven, probably at 400 degrees on the oven’s super convection setting to toast them to a golden brown.

I then made a dressing with two eggs, olive oil, and lemon juice.  It broke so I added another egg and it broke again.  If I had mixed the olive oil and lemon juice first and then added the whipped eggs, it may not have broken (i.e. stayed thick and creamy).  I chopped four or five anchovies filets and added them to the dressing.

Mike arrived at 6:30 with a stellar bottle of 2015 Amarone Della Valpolicell, Famiglia Castanegdi. It had a rich licorice aroma to me.  Mike said that good amarone is made by letting the grapes dry to raisins and then processing them into wine which gives the wine its distinctive flavor profile.  Here are the vineyard’s notes on this wine:
Production Area

Municipality of Mezzane di Sotto - Monti Garbi District (Verona)
GRAPES
Corvina and Corvinone 70% - Rondinella 20% - Croatina 5% - Oseleta 5%
FLAVOUR
Well balanced, with fat tannins, soft, warm, savoury, elegant, fine and fresh.
AROMA
Ripe red fruit, spicy aromas of liquorice, black pepper and hints of chocolate
The price at the vineyard is 31.90 euros, which makes the $57.00 Mike paid at Jubilation seem reasonable.  A very special wine, deep and rich flavors without any sweetness, just layer after layer of tannin richness.

Suzette boiled about 2/3 lb. of Italian spaghetti and served dishes of spaghetti covered by Bolognese sauce.

I tossed the salad with the dressing and a Suzette added croutons and we each served ourselves salad and I lay three anchovies on each salad.

Even though Suzette and I had eaten some PPI artichoke before the meal, this was a relatively light
dinner, just salad and spaghetti.

After the meal I opened a bottle of grappa de Brunello I had recently bought at Total Wine for $35.00 and served pieces of dark chocolate with it.

We watched Discovering your Roots after dinner.  This week featured the family histories of Micheal Moore, Laura Linney, and Chloe Sevigny.

The most interesting fact was that Micheal Moore’s first relative arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 as a prisoner of war from the Scottish Rebellion against England transported to the U.S. and sold into slavery by the British.  He also had several generations of Quakers who were war resisters in the 1700’s.  His family history seems to explain in part his pugnacious nature.

Mike left at 9:15 when Suzette went to bed and I followed her shortly thereafter.

Bon Appetit