April 1, 2021 Lunch - Salad and cheese Dinner -New Recipe, Poached Salmon with Sorrel Cream Sauce and Mixed Couscous and Ratatouille
Another great day. Etienne spent the night in the guest room and I spent the day with him instead of working at my desk. We talked and watched the market surge upward until 10:00.
His life experience is similar to mine in age and experiences, perhaps even better. His granda d was treasurer of Goodyear during the war and lived in England and Etienne was raised in L.A. on Balboa Island and came of age in the 60’s as I did, but in LA.
At 10:00 we ate breakfast. His diet is similar to mine so he was happy with a bowl of granola with fruit salad and yogurt. Etienne was even more hard core than me, eating his granola without milk. I felt a little guilty and a softy adding milk to mine.
Besides the market going on a tear again, the great experience today was Etienne reconnecting my old stereo system. It took him from 10:00 until 4:30 but he was determined to get it going.
After ten years without sound, it was amazing to hear my old records and DVDs. I was blown away.
At 11:30 I made us salads with romaine and butter lettuce, tomato, cucumber, radish, and green onion dressed with Caesar Dressing and put out cheeses and toasted slices of French Baguette. The cheeses included Delice, Brie, Manchego, Swiss Gruyere, and goat.
After lunch I watched the market close while Etienne worked on the stereo system. The market pulled back toward the close as traders closed out their positions before going on Easter vacation. The markets will be closed on Friday, which is Good Friday. For example, Apple pulled back from a gain of $2.00 per share to a gain of about $.60. Still, my portfolio rose a more than respectable 1.2%.
I napped from 2:00 until 4:00.
I was awakened by the sound of my stereo playing. I thought I was in heaven.
Etienne is a member of our meditation group, so at 5:00 we meditated until 5:30.
I was determined to thank him for his success in getting the stereo going, so after meditation we drove the few blocks to Bosque Bakery and I bought him two loaves of fresh from the oven sourdough bread, one for him and one for Beth, Peter’s Ex-wife, whose house Etienne will be staying at tonight. I bought myself a loaf of rye bread for herring and Gravad lax sandwiches.
I bought a 1.8 lb. piece of salmon yesterday at Sprouts that I had decided to poach tonight and serve with a sorrel cream sauce such as I saw in a great French chefs documentary at the Troisgrois brothers’ world class restaurant near Lyon. Their father created it as his signature dish at Freres Troisgros, which was considered the best restaurant in the world at the time in the early 60’s. Here is a paragraph from his obituary of September 2020:
The Troisgros’ restaurant’s most famous dish was salmon with sorrel sauce (saumon à l’oseille). In the Troisgros kitchen the sauce was not thickened with starch but depended on well-reduced sauce ingredients and a touch of cream. Mr. Boulud pointed out that the dish was cooked in a nonstick pan, noting that Mr. Troisgros was among the first chefs to use one.
I had invited Willy to join us for dinner and he said he needed to leave by 7:30 ish. I called Suzette, and she was still at her desk in Los Lunas, so I was on my own. I enlisted the services of Etienne.
Poached salmon with sorrel cream sauce
We have lots of sorrel growing in our garden, and it is in its Spring bloom, so at 6:15 Etienne and I picked a basket of it. Then we went to the other garden and I picked four sprigs of young tarragon sprouts and Etienne grabbed a handful of chives.
We then went to the kitchen and I checked Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking for sorrel sauce. There was no sauce but there was a recipe for sorrel soup. When I checked the soup recipe I noted that she said to cut the sorrel leaves in a chiffonade cut. So while Etienne cleaned and sliced the chives, I rinsed and spun the sorrel leaves and tarragon sprigs and then destemmed the sorrel leaves. I then lay the leave halves in the same direction in three or four piles that I could hold easily and cut them across the thin part of the leaf in narrow strips. To me this is a chiffonade cut. It removes all the tough parts and tension in the leaf, so it can go into solution easily.
Etienne and I then fetched the casseroles from the garage. One with the ratatouille I made Tuesday night and the other with the Cream of Asparagus soup Suzette made yesterday. My idea was to short circuit the making of the sorrel sauce by adding the sorrel to the asparagus soup, but that is not what happened. Instead Suzette arrived around 6:50 just as I was making the poaching medium for the salmon. She confirmed the poaching medium ingredients and fetched the cast iron deep walled sauté skillet she preferred to poach the salmon. Etienne fetched the bottle of Gruet Rose champagne, and I melted 5 T. of butter in the skillet and sliced a clove of garlic into thin rounds and added that to the skillet and after a minute added some champagne and the last of the Cornish Game hen broth Suzette made Tuesday evening after we finished our dinner of roasted game hen.
Suzette then suggested I divide the salmon into four serving slices. That left the irregular front section near the gills , which I saved for sushi tomorrow. Suzette fetched the wok cover and I added the chopped chives to the poaching medium and we poached the salmon at high heat.
While the salmon was poaching I made a roux with 3 T. of butter and 2 T. of flour cooking it slowly to keep it from changing color and we heated the Ratatoulle at low heat. When the salmon was finished poaching, I remove the fillets to a plate and added the sorrel to the poaching medium. It cooked immediately and change color from bright green to dull grayish green.
Suzette was at my side at the stove and she asked, “Do you want to pour the poaching medium into the roux or the around into the sauce?”
In an instant she made the decision and poured about 3/4 of the roux into the medium. It coagulated into a loose sauce almost immediately, so she poured in the rest of the roux and asked me to fetch the heavy cream from the fridge. I added about 1/4 cup of cream to the about 1 1/2 cups of sauce and the sorrel cream sauce was perfect. I felt like we were channeling the Troisgros brothers.
I heated the container of PPI couscous and vegetables I made Tuesday in the microwave and returned the poached salmon fillets to the skillet that now held the sorrel cream sauce.
When the couscous was ready. Suzette plated the four plates with a pile of couscous and vegetables covered by a spoonful or two of warm ratatouille and finally lay a salmon fillet on top of the pile with a couple of added spoonfuls of sorrel cream sauce.
I poured glasses of Emma Reichart German Riesling for Etienne and me and rose of Pinot for Willy and Suzette.
Willy ate near the TV on a little table, Etienne sat at the other little rattan table in the big green chair about 6 feet from Willy and Suzette and I sat at the dining table about 7 feet behind the green chair to achieve a bit of social distancing as we listened to the stereo play music for the first time during dinner in the last ten years. The most amazing thing was that the music was coming out of the surround sound speakers located on the ceiling above the dining table as well as the stereo speakers in the living room. We had surround sound from the stereo.
I told everyone that this recipe was one of the most famous recipes in France and that it had been developed at Le Pyramided near Lyon, which was almost correct. The patriarch Troisgros started his career at Le Pyramide but soon left to start Freres Troisgros also near Lyon.
Etienne, said, “Oh, Beaujolais and Burgundy country,” adding that wine perspective.
Willy left for the gym shortly after 7:30 and Etienne gathered up his stuff and left at 8:00.
Suzette poured us glasses of her homemade lemincello and we shared a glass before Etienne left.
After Etienne left we watched a new episode of Midsomer Mystery and Suzette went to bed at 9:30 after her 12 hour day of work. I stayed up to watch Rachel Maddow at 10:00 and went to bed at 11:00.
I blogged this on Good Friday morning.
I can hardly believe what a great day yesterday was; a great day in the market, the stereo was resurrected, we had a great mediation and I made a new friend, and I replicated one of the greatest dishes of modern French Cuisine.
For me it seemed like Good Friday and Easter combined and came early for me.
Bon Appetit
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