October 2, 2019 Lunch – Salmon Donburi. Dinner – Grilled Lamb Chops, carrots, and Artichokes and Chard Couscous

October 2, 2019 Lunch – Salmon Donburi.  Dinner – Grilled Lamb Chops, carrots, and Artichokes and  Chard Couscous

I ate my usual breakfast, granola, milk, yogurt, and blueberries and then went a doctor’s appointment.

I then worked until 12:30.

I tried to replicate Donburi , a Japanese dish that includes eggs, a meat, rice, and green onions.  I had PPI brown rice, vegetables, and green onion.  I made a broth of dashi, dark soy and white soy. Then I heated the bowl filled with rice, vegetables, dashi and soy.  Then I whisked two eggs and added those to the bowl and cooked it for about 4 minutes.  The egg firmed but in solution.  I had changed the recipe from pre-cooking the eggs until almost firm to making the eggs part of the sauce.

The dish was still delicious but lacked that delicate egg custard consistency that pre-cooking the egg would have achieved.

I have some rice and vegetables and salmon left and will try again and this time follow the recipe more closely as to the proportion of ingredients and preparation of the eggs.

Here is the recipe

Here is a picture of the result today.

After lunch I worked on my water case.  I drafted the order of the Court’s decision yesterday and a form of bond and sent it to the State for comment.

Suzette arrived at 5:00.

When I finished working around 5:15 I cleaned the carrots she picked from our garden, which were tiny, and the larger but still small carrots we had bought at the Farmers’ Market Saturday a week ago.

I then went to the garden and picked tarragon, chives, topped some basil, one plum tomato, and picked about a dozen Chard leaves.

I first de-stemmed the Chard leaves and cut them into bite sized pieces.

I then rinsed them in a colander.

Next I made the dipping sauce for the Artichokes. I combined the juice of ½ lemon with 2 tsp.. of tarragon, a few basil leaves, and ¼ cup of thinly sliced chives.

Then I added
2/3 cup of mayonnaise and the juice of ½ lime, which Suzette handed me thinking it was a lemon.  The lime juice actually gave the sauce a lighter flavor.

Willy arrived at 6:00 and Mike at 6:30.  Mike brought wedges of Port Salud and a German Blue Brie and super crisp crackers.  He opened the bottle of 2012 Origon Spanish Gran Reserva ($5.99 at Trader Joe’s) and made a little cheese plate and we drank red wine and crackers smeared with cheese as appetizers.  Suzette prepped 8 lamb chops and started them grilling, while I started prepping the Couscous.

Suzette put the carrots into a Pyrex baking dish and covered the dish with Saran and blanched them with a bit of water in the microwave.

Then she put the pyrex dish into the propane grill and roasted the carrots in the grill atmosphere with the Artichokes and lamb.

I diced about 2 T. of red onion, 1 clove of garlic, and the two small tomatoes from the garden.  I then melted 3 T. of butter in a sauce pan and added the onion and pressed the garlic into the butter. I heated water in the kettle and added 1 cup of Couscous to the sauce pan.  After a couple of minutes, the ingredients started to brown, so I added another T. of butter.  Then Suzette added 1 ½ cups of hot water and I added the Chard.  The hot water hitting the hot ingredients created steam. We covered the
pan with its lid and kept the heat on at medium, because Suzette said the chops were almost ready.  When she brought in the chops a couple of minutes later the Couscous has not scorched. In fact it was perfect.  I must think about this new quicker way of cooking Couscous that takes about five minutes instead of fifteen.

We served ourselves buffet style.  Everything was terrific, except the Artichokes, portions of which were undercooked and tough. I attributed this to the fact that we had boiled them for 45 minutes rather than the usual time of an hour.

The carrots and Couscous were sensational, world class. The carrots were as good or better than at Audrey’s in LA. Perhaps the moral to this meal is to eat your carrots whenever you have fresh ones from the garden.

I brought out the cheese plate Mike had created with the four remaining slices of ciabatta bread Suzette had wrapped in aluminum foil and heated on the grill with the rest of the two cheese wedges and another bottle of Origon.  We each ate a slice of bread with cheese and sipped more wine.  The evening air was lovely, cool and refreshing so we talked and sipped wine and nibbled cheese.  Willy went in and cut more slices of bread and heated them and we did another round of cheese and bread and finished the second bottle of Origon by 9:00.

We said goodnight to Willy and Mike and Suzette went to bed and I worked a bit longer on correspondence and went to bed at 10:00.


I don’t think anyone missed the dessert.  A very French or Mediterranean dinner.

I wakened at 4:00 and wrote this blog and went back to bed at 6:00.

Bon Appetit