June 9, 2023 Lunch - East Ocean Dinner - Crab Vichyssoise and Crab Claw Salad and Deviled Eggs with Diane and Jim

June 9, 2023 Lunch - East Ocean Dinner - Crab Vichyssoise and Crab Claw Salad and Deviled Eggs with Diane and Jim

I awakened at 7:30 and dressed and ate granola, milk, strawberries, and yogurt at my desk.

Then at 9:30 I walked to the bank and deposited a check.

Then at 11:00 I drove to East Ocean to meet Robert for lunch. We ordered our usual, Deep Fried tofu with Mixed Vegetables and rice.

Robert is a vegetarian and a good lawyer so we had a spirited discussion of cases, both ours and those in the news.

At 1:00 we parted and I drove to el Super to shop for produce.  I bought lemons, limes, an eggplant, Snow peas, broccoli, onions, tomatoes, mangoes, yogurt, smoked pork chops, two small avocados, Persian cucumbers, mushrooms,  green onions, a spaghetti squash, and a cauliflower.

I drove home and unloaded and made a cup of hot chocolate with the last 1/2 cup of the expired milk and ate three cookies.

I watched the non-stop coverage of the indictment charges against Trump.

Dinner - Composed Crab Salad and Deviled Eggs 

Then at 5:30 we started dinner. Suzette filled four soup bowls with crab vichyssoise and chilled them in the fridge and then went to the garden and picked lettuce and a dozen chives, while I made the dressing which is a combination of a mignonette dressing and a Louis sauce.  I first mince a shallot and cover the minced pieces with fresh lemon juice. After letting it sit for twenty or thirty minutes to cook the shallot a bit, I add mayonnaise, catsup, and horseradish to taste and whisk the ingredients together. The result is a creamy slightly pink sauce with a slightly tangy flavor. I thought it needed a little more flavor so I went to the garden and picked two stalks of tarragon and chopped the leaves of one and added the approximately 1 T. of tarragon to the sauce.  I used the stems of leaves on the other to decorate each plate. I kept the composed salad on 1/2 of the plate.

I then thinly sliced the dozen chives and put them into a bowl.

While the minced shallot was cooking in the lemon juice I sliced a large avocado, two tomatoes, two Persian cucumbers and two radishes and arranged the slices on four plates to which Suzette added rinsed and spun lettuce.

Suzette then suggested that she make deviled eggs and asparagus so she snapped and steamed 16 asparagus stalks and boiled 6 eggs.  

When the eggs were hard boiled she cut them in half and placed each white half in a cup on one of the twelve depressions on the side of a deviled eggs platters. She then mixed the yolks with mayonnaise and mustard and a small amount of horseradish and filled each egg white with a dollop of yolk mixture and I filled the central bowl with a dozen dill pickles I had made and Suzette added four steamed asparagus to each plate.

Diane and Jim arrived with a lemon ice box pie and a bottle of rose from Costco a few minutes after 7:00. We had opened the Domaine du Tamaray rose’ that I bought at Costco on Thursday and poured ourselves glasses a few minutes before 7:00, so I poured Jim and Diane glasses and Suzette added crab claws to each plate and garnished each bowl of soup with chives and put the soup bowls on a tray that Jim carried out to the table under the gazebo that Suzette had set with Silverware and napkins and we carried our plates and glasses of wine out. 

We have known Diane and Jim for thirty years, our children who are the same ages grew up together so we have much to talk about. Diane described her recent back surgery and they told us about Emily’s recent degree in Marine biology from University of Miami. 

Jim and Diane are among the most travelled persons we know.  Jim served in Morocco in the peace corp and was an architect and Diane’s career was serving as a ranger and administrator for the Department of the Interior, so both of their careers involved traveling and they also travel for pleasure. They told us they had just returned from a wedding in Albany, NY and a side trip to Montreal and Quebec City. When we talked about Willy’s trip to Bali they waxed glowingly about a bike tour down from an extinct volcano through villages and countryside that they recommended for Willy.  Jim even remembered Willy’s Facebook name and texted him the information from our table, which impressed me in both respects.

After we finished our salads and a bottle of the Kirkland rose I bought at Costco that was much lighter and thinner in flavor than the Tamaray, Suzette and Jim took in the plates and brought out the lemon pie and the bottle of homemade limoncello with cordial glasses and small plates.

I cut pieces of pie and Suzette poured glasses of limoncello.

Diane loved the small tall cordial glasses and I loved the pie that reminded me off businessmen’s lunch desserts from my first days of practicing law in Fort Worth in the early 70’s.

We talked and ate and sipped until 9:45 when we said goodnight.

We heard a sound of water that we tried to find and also tried to turn off the water at the meter without success until 10:45 when we went to bed after calling Joe, the plumber.

I loved this light, fresh, simple but elegant dinner that reminded me more of dining in France than any other meal in recent memory. Eating fresh lettuce and seasoning with fresh herbs from our garden and eating and drinking and, being outside  with friends made it a wonderful evening.

We saved the crab shells so we can make crab broth for more crab vichyssoise.

I was so involved with discussion and serving dinner that I did not take any pictures, alas.

Bon Appetit