July 31, 2019 Linch – Pork and Noodle Soup Dinner – Chez Mamou

July 31, 2019 Linch – Pork and Noodle Soup   Dinner – Chez Mamou

What a fun and productive day.

It started with a 19 mile ride to Rio Bravo.  My first of this year at 8:00.  The tree canopy over most of the bike trail made the ride cool and idyllic.

Then I worked until noon, when I made a simple noodle soup with some of the rice stick noodles we bought yesterday and a few Saba noodles plus about 1 cup of diced, Savoy cabbage, 2 oz. of yellow onion diced, 1 mushroom sliced, a teaspoon of chicken stock, and a heaping T. of red miso, plus  1 BBQ rib diced.  The result was very pleasant.  The simmer of the soup softened the rib, which flavored the soup.  I ate it with a squirt of hoisin sauce.

Suzette and I attended the Old Town Landowners’ meeting at 3:30 and at 4:00 left and drove to Santa Fe.  We arrived at 5:15 in time for a drink at Casa Sena and still make the 6:00 start of the evening’s Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival performance.  There were two interesting contemporary pieces, an intermission, and then a String quartet and piano concerto written by Erich Korngold with a piano, two violins, a viola, and a cello.

After the concert at 7:45 we walked three blocks up Palace to Chez Mamou for dinner.  We selected a table at the back of the patio that was quite secluded.  Our waiter was wonderful.  As soon as we ordered our entrees, beef short ribs with mashed potatoes and a heavy mushroom demiglace sauce for Suzette  and a duck breast served with mashed parsnips and a raspberry demiglace sauce for me, he asked do you want the special Beet salad and we said yes.  We tried several wines and settled on a bottle of Petit Sirah and Petit Verdot blend from Lodi.  It was a deep purple color and very jammy, like so many wines from Lodi and perfect with Suzette’s beef dish.  I found it quite drinkable after I put five or six ice cubes in it to cool it and lighten the jamminess.

The beet salad was a beautifully composed salad in a circle that had been made with a collar with diced red beets on the bottom, then diced avocado and on top slices of pink grapefruit with dabs of goat cheese on four sides and a generous sprinkle of toasted pistachio nuts.  It was a lovely appetizer.

I was carried away with the fact that the owner was a master baker and the waiter told that he had created special desserts, so we ordered three to go, which I now regret because of the cost and because sweets are not on my diet.

I like Chez Mamou because it is a real French bistro.  The only thing like it in Albuquerque is Crepe Michel or Le Torquet.  Plus the pastries are first rate.

We drove home at 9:30 and went to bed immediately upon arrival after a truly lovely evening.  The best part of the evening and what precipitated it was Suzette winning two tickets for being the third caller to call KHFM when they were offered.

Way more fun than staying home.

Bon Appetit