April 8, 2023 Lunch - Dim Sum at Ming Dynasty Dinner - Stewed Beef Short Ribs with Mashed Potatoes on a bed of fresh Spinach and Chocolate Chocolate chip cookies
The day started slowly with some soccer and bowls of oatmeal with diced apple, brown sugar, and raisins.
We then prepared dinner, Suzette braised five beef short ribs while I diced a medium onion, three stalks of celery, two carrots, and three Roma tomatoes. After Suzette braised the ingredients in the large Le Creuset casserole she covered the ingredients with the fresh Turkey stock we made on Thursday and cooked the casserole in the oven for five hours, two hours at 350 and three hours at 200 degrees.
Monica and Suzette went to the flea market at the state fair grounds at 10:30 and I stayed to watch Man City crush Southampton 4 to 1 including a beautiful bicycle kick goal by Haaland.
When I arrived at Ming Dynasty at 11:38 everyone had already arrived, Aaron, Alexi, Monica, and Suzette. Ming Dynasty is the best Dim Sum restaurant in the state and today was further proof.
Aaron ordered almost everything on the menu and several items twice such as the pork and ginger steamed dumplings that were Alexi’s favorite and the fried shrimp balls rolled in fried noodle threads that everyone else two of. I loved it all and I was happy to split the bill, which came to only $30.00 each after stuffing ourselves on small elegant dumplings and puffy rolls of steamed bread filled with BBQ pork and Chinese sausages.
Monica thought it was the best restaurant she had eaten at in New Mexico. For Dim Sum I could not agree more heartily.
After lunch I met Suzette at Albuquerque water gardens where we bought three goldfish and two water plants that we took home and put into our pond. So the pond is taken care of for this year and hopefully for years to come because Suzette is going to re-design the cover we put over it in winter so leaves will not touch the water and poison the water.
We invited Willy for dinner at 6:30, so at 5:30 I made a batch of chocolate chocolate Chip cookies. I mostly followed the basic recipe, 1/2 lb. of butter creamed, 3/4 cup of brown sugar and 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, three medium eggs instead of two large eggs, 1 3/4 cup of flour plus 1/4 cup of baking cocoa instead of 2 cups of flour, 1/2 tsp. of baking soda, and 1/2 tsp. of salt. The resulting cookies were impressive. They rose into soft mounds with crisp flattened edges and were very chocolatey. Suzette helped me bake the cookies to perfection by cooking them on the bottom rung of the oven 6 or 7 minutes and then on the top rung of the oven for 6 or 7 minutes. After the cookies were baked we lay them on drying racks to cool flat.
While I made the cookies Suzette boiled Yukon Gold potatoes and stripped stems from leaves of baby spinach. At 6:15 I fetched 2 T. of butter and 1/2 cup of milk that Suzette heated in the microwave and washed out the Kitchenaid bowl I had used for the cookies so Suzette could use it to mash the boiled potatoes with the melted butter and hot milk.
Willy arrived at the designated dinner time precisely at 6:30 as Suzette was finishing the mashed potatoes. Willy poured out the last half bottle of Kirkland Rioja Reserva into three glasses and Suzette filled pasta bowls with layers of fresh spinach leaves, then a mound of mashed potatoes, and finally spoonfuls of the beef short rib stew. The stew was watery rather than viscous so it emulsified the potatoes, which was not unpleasant because the extra turkey stock I added at 11:00 to cover the ingredients completely cooked the short ribs thoroughly, so they tore apart easily with the flick of a knife.
We enjoyed dinner immensely and then watched the last half of the Harry Potter movie, Prisoner of Azkaban, with sips of cognac for me and Suzette and chocolate chip cookies.
Willy left at 8:30 with a bag of cookies and we watched the last of the most recent Father Brown series on PBS and then Suzette went to bed at 9:15.
I stayed up and read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera until 12:00 and then wrote this blog.
The most interesting comment of the day equal to Monica’s praise of Ming Dynasty being the best restaurant in New Mexico, was Suzette’s comment as she was going to sleep, “I love the smell of roasting meat filling the house from the turkey and beef short ribs.” Spoken like the true carnivore, we both are and humans have been for much of recent human history.
Bon Appetit
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