March 11, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish Dinner Swedish Meatballs with Egg Noodles and steamed Broccoli with Mornay Sauce

 March 11, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish Dinner Swedish Meatballs with Egg Noodles and steamed Broccoli with Mornay Sauce

Today’s Lunch was memorable.

Yesterday, I received a call from Sharmin wanting to pick my brain on a couple of legal matters. 

I suggested meeting for lunch at my new favorite restaurant east of the University on Central, Crazy Fish.

Her response was immediate, “That’s my favorite also.”

So we agreed to meet at 11:30 today at Crazy Fish.  

I was a few minutes early. I reviewed the menu and decided on a bowl of ramen noodles with pork belly, Japanese fish cakes, bamboo shoots, and a hard boiled egg in a Tonkatsu (pork) broth because I had eaten a slice of toasted bagel spread with cream Cheese and garnished with red onion and Gravad lax slices for breakfast at 9:30.

When Sharmin arrived she ordered an order of salmon sashimi on shredded daikon and a salmon roll with Ponzu sauce and I ordered my ramen bowl.

We discussed lots of issues as she brought me up to date on the latest developments in her management of Zazz Motel and even Voco.

After we ate as much as we could eat of our dishes and packed them into carry out boxes, Sharmin casually ordered tempura bananas for dessert.

What appeared a few minutes later was a platter with three scoops of chocolate ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup and honey surrounded by tempura fried banana sections. This was the best and most unusual dessert I have eaten in a long time and provided one more reason to love dining at Crazy Fish.

After lunch I drove home and worked until 3:15 when I went to the Post Office to buy stamps and mail a letter until I realized I did not have the correct address. 

I then drove to El Super to shop for groceries through the traffic jam on the Central Ave bridge over the Rio Grande. I bought sweet potatoes, romaine lettuce, radishes, Persian cucumbers, orange juice, mushrooms, green beans, red onions, and a can of black beans.

Dinner - It was around 4:30 when I arrived at home and unloaded and went to my computer and had to review and file my Scheduling Order until 5:30 when Suzette arrived and asked me if I wanted to eat Swedish meatballs with egg noodles. The Swedish meatballs come with brown gravy and a funky red berry sweetened compote sold in a box at Costco.  We decided to steam some broccoli with it and sauce the broccoli with some PPI mornay sauce. 

I deflowered a head of broccoli and put the flowerets into the steamer and filled it to the level of broccoli with water and put it on the stove.

Suzette sautéed the meatballs in a large skillet and then added the brown gravy and boiled the egg noodles and then steamed the broccoli.

I added milk to the Mornay Sauce and heated it in the microwave for 45 seconds to emulsify it. I also fetched the last of the cranberry jelly that we agreed would be a lot tastier than the weird compote.

Suzette plated the meatballs and brown sauce on a pile of German egg noodles in pasta bowls and put the broccoli in a separate bowl covered with the Mornay sauce. 

Suzette opened a bottle of Kirkland Côtes du Rhône and poured glasses of red wine. Suzette was hungry, not having eaten lunch and ate a fair amount, while I ate about half of my dinner, which left lots of meatballs, egg noodles, and broccoli for another dinner. I liked the wine with a few ice cubes and there is about 1/2 bottle of it left also.

I sipped my wine as we watched Chris Hayes and part of Rachel and I took a couple of cookies and lay down at 7:30 to blog and read.

Bon Appetit