July 5, 2021 Lunch - Crab, ham, corn, and Egg Drop Soup. Dinner Party at Annette and a Chris’ house

July 5, 2021 Lunch - Crab, ham, corn, and Egg Drop Soup. Dinner Party at Annette and a Chris’ house

Today we started by working in the garden. Suzette went yesterday to the nursery and bought poison to kill boxwood blight and ten new vegetable plants.  Suzette planted the plants in the raised beds we had Roto-tilled two weeks ago.

When I arrived around 9:30 we started chopping away the diseased and dead boxwood and then Suzette sprayed the remaining boxwood to try to stop the spread of the blight.  We will need to repeat every seven to ten days if we want to save the Boxwood.

I had eaten 1/2 of a blueberry muffin before going outside to work and when I finished around 10:45 I ate a bowl of Tuscan melon cubes Suzette had prepared with a handful of granola, and two spoonfuls of yogurt.

After our boxwood operation we showered and dressed and at 11:15 we made the crab soup.

Crab, Corn, and Ham Soup

This is one of my favorite soups. My mother used to make it, although not always with fresh crab and corn. Today we had all the fresh ingredients.  Suzette wanted to make a chowder with potatoes but I prevailed on her to make the recipe as I recalled it.  I chopped celery, 1 T. of fresh ginger, and 3 oz. onion and Suzette sliced kernels off two ears of corn, and diced two Hormel smoked pork chop cutlets and sautéed those ingredients in a large Le Crueset casserole until tender.

Then she added the remaining 1 1/2 cups of fresh crab meat and 64 oz. of the crab stock we made from the picked shells. Finally, when the soup returned to a simmering boil we added three whisked eggs mixed with a tsp. of soy and 2 tsp. of Aji Mirin.

The result was wonderful although somewhat bland. Suzette added a bit of salt to enhance flavor, but I did not add anything and enjoyed the different flavors and textures of the ingredients until I ate a piece of ginger, which triggered my taste receptors.

Teriyaki Grilled Salmon

While Suzette was making the soup, I heated 1 cup each of soy sauce, Aji Mirin, and sake and 3 T. of sugar until the sugar went into solution.  I had tripled the basic recipe of 1/3 cup each of soy, sake, and Aji Mirin plus 1 T. of sugar because we were marinating two whole salmon fillets.

Mike arrived at 11:50 with the two fillets and helped me put each fillet into a gallon freezer bag with 1/2 of the marinade.  Mike ate a small bowl of Crab soup to taste it and then left to go to Kit and Jean-Claude’s for lunch.

I rested and Suzette worked after lunch until around 4:00.

We measured the salmon fillets at about 18 inches, so Suzette cut two 18 lengths from a 1 x 6 inch by 6 foot cedar board we bought at Home Depot for about $2.75 with her new power saw while I held an end to prevent slipping.  We used to hand saw the boards and that worked almost as well.

Suzette then soaked the boards in a tub filled with water to just above the thickness of the boards for an hour.

Then at 5:00 Suzette pre-heated our propane grill, cut the last four or five inches of tail off the fillets, positioned each fillet skin side down on a board, brushed each with marinade, and grilled the fillets for approximately 20 minutes. Normally, the edges of the board catch on fire and the edges of the fillets at the edge of the board become a bit charred and tonight was no exception.

You can undercook the fillets a bit because they will keep cooking if you leave them on the charred board, which is what we did tonight.

We lay the boards on a cookie sheet and the cookie sheet on a serving tray and wrapped aluminum foil around the boards to contain the heat as we drove to Annette and Chris’ house.  I grabbed a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a bottle of Cotes du Provence Rose’.

We arrived at 6:00 while Chris was still cooking a mushroom risotto in their Instapot. There was an abundance of wines. I chose a Chateau bottled Tavel that was much milder than many of the Tavels I buy in the local stores.  Janice, the birthday girl for whom the party was being held, had brought it. When I asked her where she got the lovely Tavel she mentioned that Kurt had ordered it on line from a distributor I had not heard of.  Kurt is a serious wine connoisseur who rarely appears at parties but whose wine selections I have enjoyed several times. Tonight was another such occasion.

When the risotto was finished Chris spooned it into a bowl and put it on the table in the kitchen beside a bowl of corn and black bean salad he had  flavored with lime juice, a bowl of fresh salad, and our grilled salmon on their planks.

The eight of us, Kit and Jean-Claude, Mike, Janice, Suzette and me along with our host and hostess, Annette and Chris, served ourselves buffet style and took our plates to two tables set up in the back yard.  We talked and ate and when we returned to the kitchen, all of the salmon was gone along with most of the other food. We suspected that Annette and Chris’ 17 and 16 year old sons had briefly left their computer consoles and foraged after we took what we wanted. Being growing boys that was almost everything.

We switched to red wine when Annette served a bottle of Spanish Tempranillo from the Calatayud region of Spain around Zaragoza.

After we had eaten and were talking, the wind began to blow rather fiercely and dark clouds threatened to pour rain, so we retreated to the kitchen.

Chris and Annette showed us to the roof patio three floors up with a perfect 360 degree view of the city and Sandias. They described the prior owner as a paranoid who was always watchful and wanted to be able to see any possible danger who included this beautiful patio in the house.

We then returned to the kitchen and Chris served birthday cake and a Marie Callander berry pie for dessert and I switched to water after a sip of Jaramillo red blend from Belen that was interesting but not very good that seemed to be a blend of baco noir and one of the sweet red grapes Robert raises.

Then Annette handed out sparklers and Chris lit them with his mini Acetylene torch and we went out into the yard to celebrate July 4th.

At around 9:45 we thanked Chris and Annette and said goodnight to everyone and drove home in a pretty heavy rain and went to bed a bit after 10:00.

The winning dish of the day for me was the crab soup, but, hands down, the crowd pleasing dish of the day was the cedar plank grilled teriyaki salmon served on the fire charred planks. Presentation often counts for a lot and the salmon’s presentation was an 11 out of 10.

Bon Appetit