June 4, 2021 breakfast - Casa Gourmet. Lunch - Shrimp And Cheese Quesadillas Dinner - Grilled Sierra Tostados, Poached Buta in Cream Sauce with Squid ink and Spinach Fettuccine and steamed Green Beans
I started the day sitting on the front porch of TR and Linda’s house sipping a chai and nibbling a slice of pound cake and discussing the day’s agenda.
Suzette soon joined us and Linda, Suzette, and I drove to Sayulita for the girls’ pedicures at 10:00. When we parted ways on the Main Street in Sayulita we were near the alley that connects the two main streets that create the one way circulation through Sayulita’s nascent downtown.
I soon found the Casa Gourmet on Maiscal that is a French boulangerie. There was a breakfast menu, so I ordered scrambled eggs with ham for 70 pesos or $3.50 and a lovely circular roll flavored with chocolate for 25 pesos or $1.25 and a cup of black tea for 15 pesos or $.75.
I took a table in front of the Bakery and soon the lady brought me a pile of scrambled eggs with small squares of ham that filled 1/2 of a paper plate with six thick slices of French baguette filling the other half of the plate. The sweet roll was on its own smaller plate. The real surprise was the tea. I had asked for it with milk and sugar and the lady had steamed the milk in her espresso machine into a froth that filled the top of the cup.
I was transported to France again by the quality of the ingredients, the craftsmanship and the caring to do things just right that is so characteristic of French Cuisine.
The puff pastry of the roll with its numerous butter flavored channels of air was divine.
I asked for butter and was brought a small slab. I savored every bite of the eggs with buttered slices of French baguette. Then I savored every bite of the circular sweet roll I tore off and ate with sips of tea.
After breakfast I walked back to the car that we had parked by the plaza and read and waited for the girls to return, in about an hour they returned from the pedicure and some shopping. Suzette decided to return to a shop to buy large cotton multicolored towel/wraps, so they returned to the shop where Suzette bought ten cotton wrap towels.
We then returned to Villa Bali and Suzette made us shrimp and cheese quesadillas pressed between two grilled tortillas.
After lunch we all took siestas until 6:30.
The birds were particularly active this evening, as were the land crabs. Linda brought out a bird identification brochure and a more comprehensive thick bird book on the birds of Mexico. We identified a type of oriole, a Western Mexico Chacalaca, and a black hooded night heron.
Then around 7:30 Linda and Suzette with a bit of supervision from me prepped dinner.
Linda made the appetizer of grilled Sierra tostados. She seasoned two of the fillets TR bought at the fish market yesterday with Tajine and lime juice, and live oil and wrapped the seasoned fillets in aluminum foil and grilled the packet on the gas grill. She spread four tostados with the PPI wasabi/avocado and then lay clumps of grilled fish on top. We each had one with choice of beer or Cotes du Provence Rose wine and a shot glass of excellent no name tequila from Tequila in a plain plastic bottle.
Dinner - a one pan meal
Technically this was a two pan meal because Suzette boiled two clumps each of squid ink fettuccine and spinach fettuccine first and then steamed the green beans but almost everything was served from one pan
Suzette chopped several cloves of garlic and a green onion and then put them in a skillet with 1 stick of butter, 3/4 cup each of white wine and pasta water and heated the poaching medium. Then she pay two boot fish, which resembled a parrotfish to me and are prized for their flavor because their diet consists mainly of oysters they tear from the rocks with their mouth of jagged sharp teeth.
Here is a photo of the fillets. The flesh is grayish white with a pretty loose flake.
The Poached Bota fillets
Suzette then poached the fillets covered. After she removed the fish from the large skillet she made a beurre marie with a T. each of flour and butter and added that to the medium. She stirred the skillet until the sauce began to thicken and then added the pasta and finally the poached
The final dish with fish and pasta in béchamel
I snapped 1/2 lb. of string beans we bought at La Comer and Suzette steamed them in a steamer insert in the pot used to boil fettuccine over water covered in fresh water.
The Steamed String Beans
We poured glasses of beer and Rose’ while Suzette plated dinner with a pile of pasta covered with the fish in cream sauce and a small pile of green beans on the side and a quarter of a large buttera on topic each plate.
It was a wonderful dinner. I had never had this mild fish before and I really liked it and the cream sauce with the creamy buttera we bought at la Comer was really delicious.
I ate my dinner and all that the others’ dinner they did not eat and loved every bite.
After dinner Linda served a bowl of caramel coated pecans as a dessert.
After dark around 9:30 T.R. turned off the lights and we watched the night sky which was brilliantly clear.
Finally, at 10:00 we went to bed after a fabulous day of food.
Bon Appetit
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