August 8, 2020 Brunch – Ratatouille Egg Sandwiches with Mozzarella. Dinner – Poached Halibut with a Garlic Cream Sauce and Steamed Voodles and Broccoli.

 August 8, 2020 Brunch – Ratatouille Egg Sandwiches with Mozzarella.  Dinner – Poached Halibut with a Garlic Cream Sauce and Steamed Voodles and Broccoli.

I woke up at 5:00 but went back to bed.  At 6:00 Suzette suggested we go see the beavers.  We have beaver, a beaver pond and lodge in our neighborhood.  It is located in the Bosque near the river.  We arrived at 6:30 and immediately saw a beaver swimming toward its lodge.  In an instant it must have seen us because i5 dived under the water and disappeared, apparently into its lodge from an underwater entrance.

We then saw a flock of Mexican ducks circle and land on the water.  After a few minutes more we walked back to the car and returned home.

For some reason I receive recipes from Food and Wine magazine, perhaps because I once was given a subscription.  I had seen a recipe for Ratatouille covered toast with a fried egg that looked delicious, sipped I suggested it for brunch.  Suzette agreed but would not consider eating the bread.  So I Toasted two small slices of French bread in duck fat, as the recipe suggested and heated the pot of Ratatouille.  Suzette then took over and scrambled Two eggs and cooked them into a flat egg pancake.  For my plate, I sliced a slice of Mozzarella in half horizontally and lay a slice on each of toasted bread.  Suzette then lay the egg pancake on top of the cheese and I spooned Ratatouille over the egg pancake.

 Suzette took a different approach.  She made a virtual egg sandwich with the egg pancake on the bottom and a slice of mozzarella on top garnished by a spoonful of Ratatouille.

At noon we drove to Santa Fe to the Stephen’s Estate sale at Arroyo Hondo.  Suzette found two fabulous fashion items a sheared Lamb coat and a reversible raincoat/hooded coat.  I found a hand painted Spanish dhpitcher suitable for a holding a bottle of wine.

We paid out a little after 2:00 and drove to visit T.R. and Linda at their house on Old Pecos TrailWe sat over 10 feet apart on their patio and drank Arnold Palmers and talked until 4:00.  It was really pleasant to talk to them since we seem to share so much in common.

At 4:15 we drove back to Albuquerque and stopped at Costco.  Meat seemed really cheap.  We bought Prime beef Filet Mignon for $13.49/lb.  Lamb Chops were reduced to $6.99/lb. Halibut was $10.99/lb., and ground beef was $2.99/lb. so we bought all of those and a two pack of Dungeness crabs for the usual $7.99/lb.

We also bought coffee, mayonnaise, the fabulous roasted peanuts Linda had served us, more fresh mozzarella cheese, eggs, Romaine and bibb lettuce, and several other items.

We are apparently into the grilled meat and salad season of the year.

When we got home and settled in we decided to poach one of the two pieces of Halibut and make a garlic 

cream sauce for it utilizing the poaching medium made with butter, white wine, shallot, salt and pepper, and water. Poached fish with a garlic cream sauce is my new favorite dish. We ate it for the first time at a 

small bistro ½ block from the church in St. German de Pres.

While the Halibut was poaching I made a roux with 2 T. of melted butter and 1 heaping T. of flour for 3 or 4 minutes and turned off the heat.  When the fish had poached we turned the heat back on to low anadded the poaching medium.  We then added ¼ cup of half and half.  The sauce was still not sufficiently creamy, so we added several additions of milk until the sauce smoothed into a thick creamy consistency.

Voodles

Suzette is not eating carbs so  she recommended making Voodles, which is simply strips of squash.  I stripped the skin off a zucchini squash and then continued to run the vegetable peeler down the length of the squash and stripped lengths of squash off until I had accumulated a pile of strips.  Suzette placed them in a Pyrex baking dish and cooked them in the microwave.

Also, I chopped flowerets of broccoli off a head and cut them into bite sized pieces that we steamed in the steamer.  When everything was cooked Suzette constructed the plates with a pile of Voodles garnished with a piece of poached Halibut garnished with garlic cream sauce and broccoli flowerets scattered around in a pasta bowl.

I had chilled a bottle of Gavi Princessa which is one of m favorite white wines for a delicate poached fish such as Halibut ($13.99 at Total Wine).

We took our glasses of wine and plates of food to the garden, which was considerably cooler than the house, since the swamp cooler on the east side had stopped working.

One of the things I like the best about this type of a dinner is both light and satisfying.  I did not feel the urge for a dessert.

In fact I was so tired from awakening at 5:00 that I went to bed after Washington Week at 8:30 and slept through the night except for a brief period at 12:30 to brush my teeth.

Bon Appetit