March 30, 2023 Lunch - Greenside Cafe, Cedar Crest Dinner- Grilled Rib Steak and Asparagus and Roasted Potatoes and Carrots

March 30, 2023 Lunch - Greenside Cafe, Cedar Crest Dinner- Grilled Rib Steak and Asparagus and Roasted Potatoes and Carrots 

I took a rib steak from the freezer and Suzette’s leftover duck leg soup at 9:00 and thawed the steak and ate the soup for breakfast.

At 10:50 I walked to the Palmer’s house.  Soon thereafter Pradip arrived from Santa Fe and Susan made me a cup of rose tea from the selection of teas for Valentine’s Day she received from NM Tea Company.  She put it in a travel mug that Charlie had bought that kept the tea hot for the next 6 hours.

Charlie drove us to the Greenside Cafe in Cedar Crest for lunch with 7 of the 8 book club members.  Peter and I split an order of chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables.

Others ordered other equally interesting dishes from chicken fingers to hamburgers.

After lunch we drove to Karl and Joann’s home in Paa Ko for the meeting. The book we discussed was a modern Russian classic titled The Master and Margarita.

According to Pradip and Karl it was highly satirical if you understood the Soviet era of Stalin of the 1930’s.  I didn’t get it except for a reference to the fifth dimension and the hallucinogenic imagery.

Joann owns a Company that makes truffles and she is a wonderful baker.  Today she made a wonderful dessert board with Toll House chocolate chip cookies, a chocolate cheese cake, and a plate of coconut and cookies and cream truffles.  The core of her truffles are cake based and then dipped in chocolate to create a hard chocolate shell.

The cheese cake was flavored with cocoa powder on an crisp Oreo cookie crust and topped with a layer of Bailey’s chocolate ganache floated across about 2 inches from the edge.

I ate each and loved them with a glass of red wine.

Karl drinks good wine. Today he served a lovely Marlborough, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and and a delicious 2020 Del Dotto red blend from Napa, California.   

I could not resist asking for a few truffles and a slice of Cheese cake to take to Suzette, which Joann obliged me with.

When I returned home a bit after 5:00 Suzette was at home and I discovered that the NY DA had indicted Trump in the Stormy Daniels payoff scheme.

All the news for the next few hours was about the indictment, which is still sealed, so no one knows what the charges are or the parameters of any trial.

We decided to make a simple dinner of grilled asparagus and roasted potatoes and carrots.

I wanted a good wine to celebrate the indictment so I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2016 De Ponte Dundee Hills Pinot Noir, which is one my favorite Pinots.

Suzette grilled the thawed rib steak and asparagus and I cubed four Yukon Gold potatoes and three carrots that Suzette tossed with olive oil and garlic salt. 

I opened the bottle of wine to let it breath and we sipped it. It was tight and bitter at first but as it opened up over the next hour it became very smooth but with strong tannins.  It did not become fruity as previous bottles did.

The steak was perfectly cooked to between medium rare and rare and the potatoes and carrots were soft. Our mushrooms were beyond hope so I made a recipe of hollandaise sauce using the Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe. Essentially three egg yolks whisked with 1 T. each of cold water and lemon juice and then heated with 8 oz. of butter.

The recipe was quick tonight because I turned the heat up at the beginning of the cooking process.

I love hollandaise on asparagus and even dipped pieces of steak into it tonight.

After dinner we finished the bottle a cheese course of brie on a toasted and buttered slice of Bosque Rustic Baguette.

I woke up at 1:00 in response to a rumbling stomach, so I drank a cup of chai and blogged and went back to sleep after two more hours of news coverage.

The most important news was an interview with the Foreign Minister of Finland upon the announcement that the governments of Hungary and Turkey had voted to admit Finland into NATO.

He expressed his belief that the only effective deterrent to Russian aggression

on Finland was to admit Sweden also, which has yet to occur.

Bon Appetit