May 6, 2021 Lunch at Pennsylvania’s Grand Canyon. Dinner at Jean’s house Pounded Chicken tender mini cutlets served with a brown roux mushroom and parsley cream sauce over Linguini garnished with buttera
Today I awakened early and finished yesterday’s blog, which took a while because we finally ate a good dinner worthy of discussion and tasted some world class wines.
Today was different because we traveled back to Ephrata to pick up the van, drop off the rental car and load the van with all of our food and goods we are taking on the road.
We started the morning with a yogurt and 1/2 bagel each spread with cream cheese and a coffee for Suzette and an Earl Grey tea for me.
We dove south until about 11:00 when we turned off the route to visit Pennsylvania’s Grand Canyon. It is a creek running through a deep gorge formed in very much the way Arizona’s Grand Canyon was formed; by the disgorgement of an ancient lake’s body of water that cut a deep gorge through high hills to a depth of over 1200 feet at its greatest depth.
AfterWe walked down to the Lookout Point we ate a light meal of Boursin spread on crackers for Suzette and stale fire roasted French baguette for me, plus a fig bar and the last few sips of our Big H Lahoma vineyard Riesling and the 2016 The Knoll Lahoma Vineyard Riesling. The wines were exquisite just as fresh and engaging as they had been several days ago.
I think the employee who helped put a shot of nitrogen in the half full bottles before she capped them, which kept the wine from oxidizing.
After we ate we drove south to Lititz and picked up the van at 4:00 and I followed Suzette in the rental car to Barry’s body shop, the Hertz agent, in Ephrata to return the rental car at 5:00.
We then drove the van to Jean’s. Suzette and Jean loaded the van with water and groceries and the other items we are taking on the trip, while I watched the stock market news and prepped dinner. Jean had thawed about ten chicken tenders, so Suzette and I decided to pound, flour, and sauté the chicken tenders and make a cream sauce with the flour used to flour the chicken, a Provencal style of cooking scallops.
We decided to add the remaining 1/2 lb. of mushrooms and 1/2 bunch of Italian broad leaf parsley to the dish. First I sliced the mushrooms and added to them about 1/2 cup of diced onion from the slices left from Mrs. Lindemuth’s Birthday party. Then I destemmed the parsley and chopped the leaves roughly and added two green onions sliced thinly to the parsley and put them in a separate bowl.
Finally, I put about 1/3 cup of flour into a plastic bag with a couple of dashes each of salt, pepper, and oregano and then removed the tendon from each tender, cut each into thirds and pounded each piece with the flat side of the chef’s knife to flatten them. I then shuck the pieces and pressed flour into all their crevasses.
In a medium large pot I heated a pan of water until it boiled, added some olive oil and then the open half box of Italian linguini, and stirred it.
Then I heated butter and olive oil in one skillet and added the onions and finally the mushrooms, and after a few pieces minutes, when Suzette arrived, the parsley and green onion.
By this time Suzette had finished loading the van and stood beside me at the stove to help me.
I filled the other skillet that I had melted butter in and added olive oil to with the approximately 36 floured tenders three times as Suzette flipped and transferred the sautéed chicken tenders to a plate kept warm in the oven.
Finally when all the tenders were sautéed and put into the oven, we turned our attention to the cream sauce. Unfortunately, we had sautéed the tenders at such a high heat that the butter had darkened. Rather than starting a new roux, we all agreed to use the old roux although it had a slightly bitter flavor. This was destined to be a darkened brown roux cream sauce from this point forward.
After I added all the remaining flour in the bag used to coat the chicken to the skillet and an extra pad of butter, Suzette sautéed the roux for a few minutes and then we added in succession, pasta water, Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc white wine, cognac, and half and half to make about two cups of cream sauce.
We then added the sautéed onions, parsley, and mushrooms from the other skillet to the cream sauce.
I mentioned cheese and then remembered that we still had a ball of buttera in the fridge. Suzette said, “Perfect.” So I fetched it and set it on the cutting board to drain any excess water.
Jean fetched deep pasta bowls and Suzette plated the dish. She first divided the drained pasta equally among the three bowls and lay about ten mini sautéed chicken scallops on each pile. Then I spooned the mushroom parsley cream sauce over the top of each pile of pasta and chicken. Finally Suzette divided the ball of buttera into three sections and put one 1/3 on each pile.
We poured out the Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc and had a hardy pasta dinner.
The Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc was an exceptional wine. It had an excellent balance of fruit, grapefruit citrus, and mineral/acid; everything you would want in a Sauvignon Blanc.
Today the market finally stated turning from negative to positive, with a good earnings report from Square, I think it might go higher tomorrow. Today the DOW was up 318 points and the NASDAQ was up 50 points and my portfolio made its first small gain in three days after losing about 2.5%.
Square’s profit from its Bitcoin holdings of $3.5 billion significantly beat analysts’ projected $2 billion gain. More interestingly to me, Square reported revenue from handling Bitcoin transactions of $75 million. The transaction revenue tells me that Square has developed a functioning system for handling Bitcoin transactions, which is why I bought Square. I am hoping Square becomes the dominant facilitator for Bitcoin transactions, like MasterCard and Visa are for credit card transactions.
After dinner we sat on one couch and Jean lay on the other couch in the living room area and watched Chris Hayes on MSNBC until 8:00 when Jean asked, “Is there anything on except news.” I ran the channels and found “The Fifth Element” just starting on the AMC channel and we watched that. Jean went to bed at 9:30 but we stayed up to watch it to the end at 11:00. It is one of our favorite movies. I had forgotten that it is a love story in the midst of a sci-fi thriller, Humor, and lots of fighting between the forces of good and evil. Literally it has a bit of everything that makes a movie watchable.
I then blogged a bit to blog and finished this blog in the morning.
Dinner was a great example of how you can create a delicious dish out of random ingredients.
The creativity of tonight’s dinner, which would merit a place on any fine dining restaurant’s menu, was only equaled by the impromptu bruschetta sandwiches we made with grilled slices of sweet salami and a slice of Provolone cheese on fire grilled slices of French baguette at Lake Keuka two nights ago.
So far the food component of the trip has exceeded my expectations.
We have now had at least four exciting dinners.
Bon Appetit
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