Both Suzette and I worked hard today. Suzette worked ten hours and I had over four hours of billed tIme.
I ate granola, yogurt, milk, and diced apple for breakfast.
Then I walked one mile without stopping. It tired me but it cheered me to make it. After a few minutes rest I showered and dressed and reviewed a lease. I was hungry again by 11:00 so I heated the remand pork Miso Moodle Soup after adding more miso, a sliced green onion, six heads-on shrimp and six or seven chicken mini wontons.
I ate it with hoisin and Sriracha and fresh mung bean sprouts.
I then lay down for fifteen minutes until I was awakened by a phone call from Matt. I then got up and worked until almost 2:00, when I went to my appointment and worked until 4:30.
Matt from the film company came by to sign papers and discuss the filming at our house and at 5:45 we went to Dan Peeples’ photography opening at 208 Gallery on Broadway.
Val was handling the bar for the art opening and the new brew pub next door The Thirsty Eye was open. Both shared a patio behind their store fronts so we bought glasses of wine and walked through to the back patio and sat at a picnic table by the covered cooking area of Joshua Chile, a pop up chef, who had set up in the patio behind the gallery and a brew pub next door.
We then returned home and cooked dinner. I wanted some pasta and Suzette said we needed to eat the PPI Roasted Chicken and I asked if we had any pesto. Suzette said we did not but she could use some fresh basil from the garden. And that is how we created a new recipe:
Deconstructed Pesto Chicken Pasta
I gathered up a small piece of Poblano Chile, the PPI Chicken, a zucchini squash, a medium onion, and a clove of elephant garlic and diced them.
I placed the chicken and all the other vegetables in separate bowls.
I then opened a bottle of Picton Bay New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Trader Joe’s and sipped a glass of the wine and watched Rachel Maddow while Suzette took over the cooking duties. There are two different ways we cook. For one dish meals like tonight’s, I prep and Suzette cooks. For multi-dish dinners such as a grilled meat, a vegetable, a starch, and a sauce, we each cook one or two dishes or sauces. Suzette always grills and does most of the stove top cooking. I or we together do the sauces and I do most of the prep. I do all the shopping and we discuss meals when I have not pre-selected the ingredients for a meal. Tonight was a discussed meal driven by the need to use up some PPIs.
Suzette went to the garden and fetched a handful of basil leaves and washed them and chopped them and fetched the bag of piñon nuts purchased at Costco and the bag of shredded Pecorino Romano cheese (Costco) from the fridge.
She put a pot of water on the stove to boil and then added Italian dry casarecce macaroni (Costco) to simmer. Suzette then sautéed the piñon nuts with the vegetables in olive oil and butter to cook them. Then she added the roasted chicken to heat it. When the pasta was cooked she combined it with some white wine, the basil, about 1/3 cup of grated Pecorino Romano cheese and the vegetable and chicken mixture in a large serving bowl and we were ready to eat. Suzette poured herself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. The wine has both bright citrus overtones mixed with a darker minerality. Not my favorite New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and perhaps not the best wine for this dinner, but very drinkable.
The dish had a soft texture with an interesting complex of flavors, creamy from the melted cheese while also being flavored slightly by the white wine, the basil, and the rich roasted piñon nuts. Because the ingredients were not blended together, the pesto sauce was not a sauce but a truly deconstructed array of flavors, that was very interesting.
We were both tired and went to bed before 9:00.
Bon Appetit
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