August 9, 2020 Brunch – Dungeness Crab and Caesar Salad. Dinner – sautéed Smoked Pork Cutlets with Cottage Fries and Fried Eggs with maitake mushrooms.

 August 9, 2020 Brunch – Dungeness Crab and Caesar Salad. Dinner – sautéed Smoked Pork Cutlets with Cottage Fries and Fried Eggs with maitake mushrooms.

I awakened at around 7:30. I made my usual crab sauce.  It is a tripartite sauce combining French Migonette, American cocktail sauce and Creole Louis Sauces.  I minced ½ shallot and add juice of ½ lemon.  I then went to the garden and picked five or six chives that I sliced 1 T. Of and added to the shallots.  I let this mixture cook for about ½ hour.  Then I added catsup, horseradish, and mayonnaise and then a bit more lemon juice to hide the prepared flavor of the mayonnaise. I then chilled the sauce.

I had cleaned the crabs last night so that only meat and shell remained.

We decided to make a Caesar salad, I peeled and sliced 1/3 cucumber and fetched the caeser salad dressing from the fridge and heated it for 15 seconds to melt the olive oil.  Suzette spun and tore a head of Romaine lettuce and added croutons and I shaved several slices of Pecorini –Romano cheese.  Suzette added those ingredients to a salad bowl and I applied the dressing and tossed the salad.

Suzette placed ice cubes in a large Chinese steel platter and placed the two crabs on the ice and she also placed a substantial number of cubes with water in our copper Mexican ice bucket and placed the 1990 Paul Bara Grande Cru champagne in the bucket. Suzette filled pasta bowls with salad and we took the salad bowls, champagne bucket, and tray full of crabs to the garden.  

When we got settled in the garden, I opened the bottle.  Here are some photos.

The crab was perfectly cooked and fresh, which made it full of succulent crab meat.  We ate all the claw meat dripping the excess meat and juices onto our salad and dipping lettuce and crab into the sauce.  

Suzette was enjoying the crab meat so she ate ½ of the meat in the central body.  The meal was scrumptious.  After the meal we picked the rest of the meat out of the crabs and refrigerated it for a Halibut and crab soufflé tomorrow night.

After lunch I lay for a nap until 1:53when Suzette awakened me for the family Zoom meeting at 2:00.

At 5:00 Suzette said she was hungry. I suggested sautéing Smoked Pork cutlets and eggs since the kitchen lacked cooling.  I separated about 2oz. of maitake mushrooms.  Suzette sliced a potato and cooked it in the microwave and then sautéed it in the skillet in which she cooked the pork cutlets.

In a separate skillet she cooked three eggs over easy with the mushrooms.

Suzette drank a Tecate beer and. Drank a glass of Cotes de Provence Rose’.

It was a filling dinner and all we could muster in the late afternoon heat.  We sat under the fan at the table in the TV room to keep cool while we ate.

We then retreated to the coolness of the bedroom.

 

At  6:00Suzette lay down to nap and i Blogged until 7:00when we started watching PBS TV.  First, a documentary on the changing seasons’ effects and maintenance of the 39 acre garden behind Buckingham Palace.  Then we watched the first episode of the new season of Endeavor.  I had chilled the bottle of German Pear William brandy and at 8:00 I made us after dinner drinks of brandy with chunks of fresh pear.

We went to bed at 9:30 after Endeavor ended.

Bon Appetit