May 12, 2019 Two Mother’s Day Meals for two mothers. Brunch – Vichyssoise and Baked Grapefruit and Foil Gras, Cream and Egg  Soufflés with Toasted Banana, Nut, and Fruit Bread

I watched the final day of English Premier soccer and enjoyed seeing Manchester City win this year’s championship while I made tropical fruit salad until 10:00.
 Here are the fruits I used.

Then I took a shower and dressed and we prepared brunch.  Mike came at 11:00 with the provisions we had requested, a baguette, a dozen eggs, brown sugar, and heavy cream. Suzette did most of the prep while I opened a bottle of Gruet Rose Brut and poured us three glasses.

Suzette then cut two grapefruit in half, sectioned the halves and sprinkled the tops with brown sugar and placed a maraschino cherry in the Center and baked them until the sections lifted slightly and the sugar melted.  She then filled cups with Vichyssoise we made yesterday and garnished the top of each cup of soup with thinly sliced chives and placed a baked grapefruit half and a cup of soup on tea plates of her Noritake magnolia pattern that we carried out to the table under the gazebo.  It was a beautifully set table.

Willy arrived a few minutes later quite hung over from his birthday party last night and chose not to drink any champagne. After we finished our first course of soup and baked grapefruit, Suzette excused herself to make the second course.

Suzette sliced foie gras and scrambled eggs and cream and filled buttered ramekins with the liquid and placed a slice of foie gras on top of each ramekin and baked them.  She also toasted slices of the baguette Mike fought and the banana nut and fruit bread she made last night.

I then opened a bottle of Gruet 2012 Blanc de Blanc and poured glasses of it and sipped as we enjoyed the lovely foie gras soufflés and bread.

We talked until 2:00.  I then followed a recipe in the Japanese Cooking Cookbook for vegetable
pickles. I peeled and sliced two carrots, one cucumber and six or seven radishes and made a Japanese pickling medium of 1 ½ cup of rice vinegar, 1/2 cup of water, 1 T. salt, 2 T. Of sugar, and the zested peel of a lemon and put the vegetables into the pickling medium and covered and chilled the bowl in the fridge.  We watched TV and rested until 4:00, when we drove to the north side of the bridge over the Rio Grande and walked a mile along the elevated road along the top of the dike.  This the farthest I have walked since my operation.

We invited Amy and Willy for dinner at 6:30.

We planned a very simple meal, grilled teriyaki marinated Aji tuna and stir fried rice noodles with onion, zucchini, and green peas.  I had made teriyaki sauce on Friday, 1/3 cup each of sake, Aji Mirin, and soy sauce plus 1/T. of sugar heated to dissolve the sugar, then cooled and poured over tuna steaks and sealed in a plastic bag and marinated two days.

 

Amy brought a bottle of sake and a Willy brought plants as a Mother’s Day gift for Suzette to plant in the garden.

 We boiled rice noodles for thirty minutes, which turned out to be too long.  Then we stir fried the green peas, onion, and zucchini and added the noodles, which immediately began falling apart as we stirred the wok.  I added sake, Chinese rice cooking wine, and Aji Mirin to loosen the noodles and to keep them from turning into a gooey mess.

We plated each plate with a pile of noodles topped with a thick wedge of seared teriyaki tuna and spooned a pile of pickled vegetables beside the noodles.

We went to the garden again and enjoyed a pleasant meal in the light breeze until it turned cool when the sky darkened.

We came in and talked until after 9:00 when Amy and Willy said  goodnight.

After everyone left we watched the final episode of Unforgotten, a Masterpiece Mystery on PBS.  Suzette went to sleep and I watched a re-run of Poldark and then a documentary on trying to protect elephants in the wild in Tanganyika and Kenya who are attacked and killed when they leave the preserve and pillage farmers’s crops.  The secret antidote is hot chili peppers.  An elephant’s sense of smell is 100 times more sensitive than humans and chilis are used to prevent elephants from entering farms bordering game preserves.

The other great fact is that grown elephants will consume 200 lb. of plants per day, mostly leaves.

I went to bed a bit after 11:00.

I locked the contrast between a French brunch and a Japanese dinner, both of which seemed really authentic to me.

Bon Appetit