May 12, 2023 Lunch - Lobster Bisque. Dinner - Smoked Trout with Lobster broth Rice and Asparagus and Baby Arugula Salad

May 12, 2023 Lunch - Lobster Bisque. Dinner - Smoked Trout with Lobster broth Rice and Asparagus and Baby Arugula Salad

Another hungry day satisfied. I started around 8:30 eating a bowl of granola with diced strawberries. 

Then at 1:00 I heated the last of the PPI Lobster bisque we had eaten several nights ago and garnished it with the small bowl of diced avocado left from that meal.  I also ate two buttered slices of rye knaekebrod, one covered with slices of Jarlsberg cheese for a Scandinavian touch.

This could have been a luxurious lunch in Scandinavia.

I then watched a soccer match from the Olympic Stadium Rome between Lazio and Lecce that was quite exciting. It reminded me that we had seen the newly built Olympic Stadium when my family visited Rome in 1960 that the Italians were very proud of.

At 4:15 I lay down to watch Ari. It was a good show analyzing the rightward trend of the Republican Party, but it was interrupted at 4:45 when Suzette arrived and we had to get everything ready for our dinner party with the Kendzierskis at 6:30.

We started by cleaning the kitchen.  I washed several pots and my wok and wok cover.

Then I diced five stalks of asparagus and added the pieces to the Pyrex baking dish Suzette had filled with the PPI Lobster broth rice.

I then diced about ten strawberries and Suzette added sugar and lemon juice to make a coulis.

Suzette then softened about 1/2 lb of butter in a bowl and then went to the garden and picked a handful of fennel fronds and one bulb and a handful of chives, which I minced and added to the butter along with the zest of a lemon and juice of 1/2 of the lemon to make a stuffing for the four fresh large trout Suzette bought at Costco yesterday.

Suzette rinsed and dried the trout and I then cut off their heads and tails and Suzette then filled each belly with the compound butter.

We finished the prep at 6:23 and at 6:30 the Mary and Ken arrived with two good bottles of wine and a lovely salad containing fresh arugula from their garden, fresh blueberries, slices of onion, and toasted pecans.  One bottle was a 2020 Pure Loire Sauvignon Blanc from Tours, France.  The other was a chateau bottled Margaux.  I chilled the Pure Loire in the freezer section of the fridge.

I opened a bottle of Vara American Silverhead Brut, the first wine made by Laurent for Vara that taste just like Gruet Brut to me.  Suzette fetched glasses and I poured them full of brut and we sat on the patio beside the glowering Don Juan rose bush full of pink blooms.

Suzette lay the stuffed trout on boards soaked in water on the heated grill on the patio, so I could hear the fish cooking while we drank the brut.

We then walked to the area where we planted the 15 Thompson grape root stock with Ken’s help about a month ago and inspected them.  About half have sprouted and Ken though several more might sprout.

As Suzette then took Ken and Mary on a tour of the rest of the garden, I noticed flames in the grill and saw that the boards were on fire and the fishes skins blackened.  I went to the kitchen and filled a large bottle with water and tossed some on the boards to extinguish the fir and turned down the heat.  This created lots of smoke and stopped the fire, which is precisely what we wanted to smoke the fish. 

Suzette came back to the grill shortly thereafter and turned off the heat and we let the fish smoke for several more minutes before Suzette brought the cooked fish to the kitchen.

There was a discussion about whether to served the charred side of the fish and I agreed to take a charred side filet and everyone else would take the uncharted side filet. The uncharged side filets were on the bottom next to the board and were moister because they had absorbed the compound butter and uncharted.  I filleted three of the trout and lay the filets on plates Suzette had spooned a pile of rice and Mary had added a pile of salad. Everyone took their plate to the table under the gazebo in the garden.

I opened the chilled bottle of Pure Loire and added ice to the ice bucket and took the wine to the table.

I poured glasses of wine and we ate the wonderful dinner by the pond and adjoining bed with its blooming rose bushes. The wine did not taste like was made from only Sauvignon Blanc grapes.  I did some research and found information stating that Touraine Sauvignon also can have an addition of gamay grapes to add richness. So what I thought was Chinen Blanc was probably gamay.

After we finished dinner, Suzette and Mary returned to the kitchen and sliced slices of the lovely Italian cloud cake and smeared a strip of strawberry coulis across each slice and added a puddle beside each slice of cloud cake.

I suggested we serve the limoncello we made with the cloud cake and Suzette fetched the bottle of limoncello and I poured us each a shot.

It was a lovely end to a lovely meal.

At 9:00 we said goodnight and Suzette went to bed and I stayed up to watch the Edmonton Oilers lose game five to the Las Vegas Knights in Stanley Cup playoffs and went bed at 11:00.

Bon Appetit