August 2, 2019 Lunch – PPI Pork and Noodle Miso soup and PPI stir fried rice flour flat noodles with pork and vegetables. Dinner – a Herring and a Liverwurst Sandwich and Clafoutis

August 2, 2019 Lunch – PPI Pork and Noodle Miso soup and PPI stir fried rice flour flat noodles with pork and vegetables.  Dinner – a Herring and a Liverwurst Sandwich and Clafoutis

I worked for a while and at 8:00 I ate granola, blueberries, milk, and mango yogurt and then walked a mile without stopping except to talk to Mary about our kids and the City’s new Visitor Information Center that will be next to our building. Mary volunteers at the current visitors’ information booth at the airport, so is familiar with the planned expansion in Old Town.

I then worked until noon when I heated the PPI Pork and Noodle Miso soup I made yesterday after dicing and adding four grilled asparagus spears to the soup and the stir fried rice flour flat noodles with pork and vegetables from my lunch with Peter on Wednesday.  It was a pleasant if unexciting meal, with noodles, pork, and vegetables two ways.

I then worked on my water cases until 4:30, filing four documents in three different cases.

At 4:30 I drove to Sprouts for its 72 hour sale.  All the items I bought except the yogurt and Liverwurst were on sale.  Lean hamburger and smoked thick cut bacon were $2.99/lb., Atlantic farm raised salmon was $6.99/lb., roasted cashew pieces were $3.99/lb., and green grapes were $.77/lb.  Sprouts plain yogurt is my favorite at $1.99 for 32 oz., which is a great price.  We both like Liverwurst, which is easy to slice for a quick sandwich, so I bought ¾ lb. of Boars Head Liverwurst for $6.99/lb.

I drove home and Suzette arrived before I did around 5:30.  She was having a cocktail and watching the news.  I was hungry so I made a Herring, sour cream and onion sandwich and a Liverwurst, onion, and mustard sandwich and ate them with a tonic water, mint syrup, and lime juice cocktail. As it turned out this was my dinner. Suzette ate slices of roasted chicken breast dipped into mayonnaise with her cocktail that ended up being her dinner.

We watched the news until Shields and Brooks ended their commentary at 6:45 and then drove to April Price’s Gallery for the opening of her Bob Ellis paintings and prints exhibit.  There was a lovely large view of Wheeler from Bblueberry Hill, where Bob lived for a while, that April said she was trying to get the City to buy and lots of monoprints and Tamarind printed multiple lithographs.  We liked a large print in greens and yellows of the Taos Gorge for $900. I may regret this statement but I will say it anyway. The problem with Bob’s work is that although it is lovely, it does not fit into a movement and I suspect people buy it because they loved Bob, as I did, rather than as a collectible.  Bob was one of the nicest persons I have ever met and his art reminds me of that friendship.  I did his divorce from Barbara, for which he gave me a monoprint.  Here is a picture of it.

Let me explain what I think is the difference between a monorint and a multiple is.  I monotype or monoprint is when the artist paints directly on the stone and that is printed once or twice.  When the image is fixed on the stone either with a fixative of by etching the image into the stone it can be printed many times and that I call a multiple or numbered lithograph.

April had laid a lovely table in the gallery with lots of wonderful foods.  I was particularly attracted to sesame chips dipped in hummus and ate a few of those plus a couple of fig and nut bars.

We were back home by 7:45 in time to watch Washington Week on PBS at 8:00, which is Suzette’s favorite, but I fear she fell asleep and missed it.

Clafoutis

Before we left for the art opening I stirred and tasted the marinating pitted and halved cherries in mint syrup and cognac and they tasted wonderful, plump, firm, and lightly saturated with alcohol. After I rested and watched Washington Week I decided to make Cherry Clafoutis.  I make Clafoutis several times a year, mostly when fresh cherries are available.  I had made one last month that was not very good because the cherries were rather sour and the flour separated from the custard.  I decided to use more cream and eggs this time to create a firmer custard that might hold the flour in suspension. The recipe is simple: scald three cups of rich milk, mix 7 T. of flour with 10 T. of powdered sugar and ½ tsp. of salt and stir into those dry ingredients three whisked eggs and the cooled scalded milk and four cups of fruit.  This recipe fills my ceramic baking dish fully when there is lots of fruit.

Tonight I used 1 ¾ cups of heavy cream and 1 ¼ cup whole milk.  I sometimes use more milk, but there was a least 1/3 cup of syrup and cognac in the cherry marinade.  I also added a fourth egg tonight to see whether that would stiffen the custard.  I stirred the ingredients together and poured them in a Buttered and sugar coated ceramic dish that I baked in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 50 minutes. The result was surprisingly good.  Here is a picture.

I love to eat warm Clafoutis, so I tried a bit as it cooled.  It was delicious and a complete success in an entirely different way than I had expected.  It was soft and almost spongy, rather than hard, perhaps because the ingredients held together in suspension, rather than separating.  This is the second time this has occurred.  The last time the whole held together was when I used half heavy cream and half half and half and included poached rhubarb and figs as the fruit. It seems like a greater percentage of butter fat in the milk and a little more egg helps congeal the custard.  I need to make another one to test this theory.  Clafoutis is my favorite dessert because it is simple to make and I love fresh fruit baked into custard. Here Is a picture of the inside.

  You can see that there is no separate white layer of congealed flour at the bottom of the dish.

Bon Appetit