December 30, 2020 Lunch – 2000 VietnamNo. 21 with Peter. Dinner – Stir Fried Chicken with Vegetables and rice

Suzette was working at home today so at 9:30 I made a Denver Omelet for breakfast.  I diced about 4 oz. of the ham we baked last night, about 2 oz. of onion, 2 oz. of yellow bell pepper, and two mushrooms.  I sautéed the ingredients in nutter and then added 3 whisked eggs.  As the omelet was cooking I added five slices of Swiss Gruyere cheese. After another minute or two as the edges began to puff up I flipped one-half onto the other half and let it cook another minute or two and then served ½ to each of us with a toasted and buttered flour tortilla.

Peter and I decided to eat lunch together.  He arrived just after 1:00 with two No. 21’s from 2000 Vietnam.  We ate outside in the sunlight at the table in the gazebo. No 21 is Bun Cha Gio, boiled vermicelli rice noodles on a bed of sliced lettuce and cucumbers with mung bean sprouts. The noodles are topped with a layer of warm grilled marinated pork and Vietnamese egg rolls. It is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. I made us iced coffee mixed with evaporated milk over ice, which we both are fond of.      I ate ½ of mine and took the rest to Suzette.  After lunch I made cups of tea and Peter sliced the Stollen he had given us for Christmas.  It was delicious, although simply a baked egg yeasted bread studded with raisins, sultanas, and almond slivers.  The unique thing about this Stollen, which was made in Dresden, where Peter was born in Germany’s Saxony region is the icing which is really not an icing. After the stollen is baked it is coated with melted butter and powdered sugar is poured over it to create a fluffy icing.

I really liked it, but could not help thinking it tasted and had the bread like consistency of Italian 

panettone.

After Peter left I worked until 4:00 when Suzette and I walked 10 blocks in the last warmth of the afternoon sunlight. 

When we returned I drank a hot buttered rum and meditated from 5:00 to 5:30. Then we watched the news until 6:00.  Suzette did not wish to cook so I took over and made a pretty elaborate stir Fry dish that included among its ingredients, the PPI chicken boiled several days ago, 1 zucchini, ½ yellow squash, ½ onion, ½ of a yellow bell pepper, garlic, ginger root, four baby Bok Choy with the white stalk and green leaves separated , about a dozen snow peas, and a handful of white Beech mushrooms. I cooked the dish in three phases.  First, the hard vegetables, then the chicken and mushrooms, and finally the green leaves and snow peas.  I made seasoning sauce of soy, Chinese Cooking wine, cornstarch, sesame oil, water, and oyster sauce and added that to flavor and thicken the liquids into a sauce.  We heated some of the PPI rice and ate a hearty fresh dinner.

Later we constructed the duck liver pate’.  I minced a large shallot and sliced sliced the duck liver into ½ inch  slabs and Suzette seasoned them with dried chervil and lavender and salt and white pepper and a dash of nutmeg. She sautéed the shallot in heated grape seed oil for a minute until they browned and then removed them from the skillet and then sautéed the duck liver slabs for a minute on both sides. Do not overlook the liver or it will melt. She lined a pyrex loaf pan with Saran and a 1 inch layer of Suzette’s poached quinces infused with Suzette’s homemade maraschino cherry syrup to which I added the sautéed duck liver slabs as she sautéed them to create a layer. We then fetched a truffle we had and I sliced it and lay four or five slices of black truffle  on the layer of foie gras.  Suzette then covered the foie gras with Saran and then weighed the entire surface down with a brick and refrigerated the Pate for  24 hours.

 

The lobes of duck liver

 

 

The lobes

  

Sautéing the shallot

    

 

                                                                     The seasonings 

     

   Sautéing  the Duck liver 

 

Lining the loaf pan with Saran and poached quinces

 

 

                   
                                        The finished loaf before Saran and brick were added

   

We went to bed when we finished prepping the foie gras loaf.  The resulting loaf of foie gras contained  a layer of quince about 1 inch thick and foie gras about ¼ inch thick.

 Bon Appetit