April 3, 2012 Dinner – Beef Stroganoff and Asparagus

April 3, 2012 Dinner – Beef Stroganoff and Asparagus

Tonight I decided to use up some of the extra mushrooms we had in the crisper that were starting to darken at the edges.  Suzette had bought a box at Costco and we had about one-half of another box already in the crisper.  I used the recipe in the “Joy of Cooking” at page 401 or 402 for “Beef Stroganoff”. 

I cut a 1 lb. rib eye steak into strips and chopped up about 3 Tbsp. of yellow onion and about sliced ¾ lb. of baby portabella mushrooms.  Then I sautéed the onion in a large skillet and added the meat and then removed the meat from the skillet and added 2 Tbsp. of butter and sautéed the mushrooms for several minutes until they became soft and then added about ¼ cup of white wine (Buena Vista 1986 Gewürztraminer, which was a little on the sherry side of wine, not crisp and fruity, more like a overly mature sherry, but not oxidized) Not great but drinkable.  Then 1 tsp. of Basil and ½ tsp of fresh ground nutmeg and 1 cup of sour cream that Suzette had fetched from the market when we discovered that our sour cream had been thrown out when it went bad a few weeks ago.  

Then I added back the meat and heated the combination without letting it boil and then served it over pasta with steamed asparagus.

We boiled a cup of thin long twists of Casarecce pasta (Costco organic Garofalo pasta from Italy) until soft and drained it and added the Beef Stroganoff.  I drank the over the hill Buena Vista 1986 Gewürztraminer and Suzette drank a beer.  We wanted a hearty dinner for a cool night.  It had snowed much of the day and it seemed like winter again, so a fire and a hearty winter dinner were definitely welcome.

Bon Appétit   

April 4, 2012 Salmon Roulade on Sweet Potato Puree garnished with baby greens and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

April 4, 2012 Salmon Medallions on Sweet Potato Puree garnished with baby greens and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Tonight when I arrived home from meditation, Suzette was preparing one of her new April through June menu items for the Green House Bistro and Bakery.   A Salmon Medallions with tomato wedges on a bed of pureed Sweet Potatoes and garnished with baby organic greens.  The recipe as served in the Bistro will be accompanied by asparagus, but tonight PPI Brussels Sprouts were the vegetable accompaniment.  What made this meal exceptional was the wine selection.  I wend into the cellar the other day and chilled a Breggo Pinot Gris 2009 from Anderson Valley.  It was crisp and fruity and complemented the fish sautéed in olive oil.

Suzette cut the salmon filet about ½ inch thick and folded it over and secured it into a roulade with toothpicks and salted and peppered one side and laid the peppered side down on the skillet in about 1/4” of olive oil heated to a sizzle.  Then Suzette salted and peppered the other side that was facing up.  After 3 to 4 minutes she flipped the fish roulades, and sautéed them 1 minute to sear and seal the juices and then covered the skillet with a wok cover to steam and reduced the heat a bit so that it would not burn but would not poach.    

Sweet Potato Puree – Suzette heated the PPI roasted sweet potatoes in the microwave and then processed them in a blender with 1 Tbsp. of Butter and ½ heated chicken stock until smooth.  (We bought the sweet potatoes at the Dallas Farmer’s Market.  They were East Texas sweet potatoes packed into our suitcase.)

Instead of the baby greens Suzette chopped organic greens from Costco and tonight we did not add the usual oven roasted tomato wedges.

Instead of asparagus Suzette used PPI Roasted Brussels Sprouts from Monday night’s meal.  They were equally wonderful and added a very Northern California feel to the meal.  You can adjust menus to suit your ingredients.  Roasted Brussels Sprouts v. steamed Asparagus.  I don’t know or care which is better.  It is ultimately a matter of taste and the bird in the hand is usually the best choice.

We bought the Breggo Pinot Gris 2009 Anderson Valley in 2010 at the Winery.  We go to the Pinot Festival in Anderson Valley every even numbered year, so we will go again this year.  I can not tell you how wonderful the Breggo wines are.  They epitomize the northern fruitiness with a slightly elegant tannic after taste. When I took my first taste tonight the wine embraced me in a cloud of fruit. The Winery says honeysuckle and baked pears and I will agree with that.  It is a taste that must be tasted and when combined with bites of the oily sautéed salmon, it was a perfect complement.   The wine was delicious beyond words.  No rough edges, only fruit and more fruit.     

Bon Appétit

April 1, 2012 Lunch Mother’s Frittata with Bernice, Dinner with Holzwiegs at J.S. Chen

April 1, 2012 Lunch - Mother’s Frittata with Bernice, Dinner - with Holzwiegs at J.S. Chen

What a whirlwind, wonderful weekend.   At around 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. today Billy made one of Mother’s favorite egg dishes; an avocado, tomato and onion frittata.  Elaine made a salad with the fresh lettuce and radishes that we picked up at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning and we stopped at Whole Foods to pick up a baguette of French bread on our way to Bernice’s.  Bernice was mother’s best and oldest friend.  We grew up ½ block from their home on Stadium Drive, before we moved to Manderly Pl. in Fort Worth.   

Bernice is still just as sharp and funny as always and we love her very much, although she suffers from Parkinson’s.  But when you are 95, you probably ought to suffer from something.  When we arrived at Bernice’s apartment we were greeted by Margarita, who is Bernice’s assistant and care giver.  After heating the frittata and the bread and setting the table in Bernice’s dining room we all sat down and ate a brunch with her.  While we were eating and talking, her son, Morton Meyerson, took a seat at the table after adjusting Bernice's computer and ate some salad and talked for a bit.  Morton has many interests and the ones we talked about today with Bernice were our families’ histories.  It seems that both of the families came from East Prussia in about the 1880’s and both came through New York.  Bernice‘s grandfather was a trader and entrepreneur.  As Morton says, “A deal maker.”  So it is clear where Morton got his deal making prowess.  Morton among other jobs was President of EDS when Ross ran for President and Ross gave the City of Dallas the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall in Morton’s honor.

Around 2:00 p.m. we left for the Dallas Museum of Art and saw the amazing Exhibit: “Youth and Beauty, Art of the American Twenties” with over 100 photos, sculptures and paintings all made between about 1920 to 1929.  There were sections on groups I had never seen before, such as the Harlem Renaissance.  The Stieglitz group was heavily represented including my favorite Marsden Hartley “Mine Cave Cabins” and a “Sterling Building” by O’Keefe and lots of photos of Rebecca Strand by lots of people.  The strongest theme of the show seemed to be eroticism.  It seemed like the U.S. broke out of the grip of Belle Époque priggishness around 1920 with the onslaught of the Jazz Era.

At around 4:00 we went to SMU to the Meadows Collection for ½ hour to see the over 500 year old Pastrana Tapestries.  They are the four largest tapestries I have ever seen (36 by 13 feet each) depicting the conquest of the North African cities of Asilah and Tangier by Afonso V (1432-81), King of Portugal in 1471.  They are richly woven in many colors including depiction of the royalty's armor in gold and sliver threads.  The most beautiful tapestries I have ever seen.

Then at 4:30 p.m. we went home and at 5:30 we drove to J.S. Chen’s 3948 Legacy Dr. in Plano, TX.  We arrived at 6:00 p.m. just as Elaine’s parents, Sandy and Rita Holzweig, were driving up.  When we walked in to the restaurant we were immediately greeted by the view of an glassed in area in the back of the restaurant in which were hung about a dozen roasted ducks.  We were shown to a large round table that seated 10 with a lazy susan in the center that rotated next to a large three or four generation Chinese family at an adjoining table of 11 or twelve.  After a few minutes I poured Pineau for all and then we called Marion, Jerry’s wife, and she said she was coming, so we ordered a dim sum dish, dumplings filled with stir fried shrimp and Chinese Green Chives.  When the dumplings were served we ordered our entrées:  Peking Duck, Jumbo Crab in Spicy Garlic Sauce w/Special Fried Rice, BBQ Duck, Stir Fried Snow Pea Sprouts, Mu Shu Vegetables, Chicken Flat Noodle with Satay Sauce, BBQ Pork.  Billy opened a bottle of Ramsteck Napa Valley Pinot Noir for those who wanted red wine with their food.  It was all wonderful. I really enjoyed every bite and although stuffed when finished,I did not feel uncomfortably so.

Marion and her daughter, Celia, joined us after about ½ hour and Marion ate as much as she could eat and we packed up the leftovers in boxes and went home happy and full.
Celia is a completely delightful 5 year old.  We went by Marion’s house on the way home to send a document to my niece, Rebecca,  while Elaine and then Marion played with Celia to all of our delight.
A lovely day with family and art and food.  What could be any better!
Bon Appétit

March 29, 2012 Lunch – La Salita Dinner – Stir Fried Spaghetti

March 29, 2012 Lunch – La Salita   Dinner – Stir Fried Spaghetti

Mike and I went to La Salita for lunch and this time I decided to order only one Chile Relleno and refried beans off the Lite Bites section of the menu ($6.85).

This time the chile relleno was tough and left me with an upset stomach that lasted into the night.   But perhaps the stomach ache was also caused by being on deadline to file two pleading in the Lower Rio Grande adjudication.  I finished drafting and editing the pleadings and filed them and sent copies to my client for mailing to the distribution list at around 6:00 p.m. when Suzette called me to the dinner table, where I was pleasantly surprised to see a plate of her famous stir fried spaghetti. 

What Suzette had prepared was a combination of PPI’s.  A bit of two PPI’s: I spaghetti with mushrooms and the Spanish tapa of artichoke hearts and fresh peas and pork lardoons.  She fried the two PPI’s  together with some PPI spaghetti in a  large skillet with Spanish olive oil. Viola, stir fired spaghetti.  A magical five minute meal that we ate with an interesting and lovely soft smooth tasting bottle of Spanish wine made from several Spanish grapes and Gewürztraminer.  

After dinner I went to the Last Thursday Book Club meeting discussion of “The Good Soldier” with Charles Palmer.  A very full day.

Bon Appétit

March 30, 2012 Breakfast – Tia Juanita’s Lunch Oyster Stew and Dinner Joe T. Garcia’s

March 30, 2012  Breakfast – Tia Juanita’s Lunch Oyster Stew and Dinner Joe T. Garcia’s

We left home for Dallas to attend the wedding of my nephew-in-law, Nick Goggans, and Brooke Botello at 7:15 a.m. and arrived at Tia Juanita’s food booth in the main concourse of the arrival/departure area at around 8:00 a.m., our new favorite breakfast burrito restaurant.  We ordered a carnitas breakfast burrito without any chili or potatoes ($7.16) and asked them to cut it in half.  After we boarded the airplane for Dallas and I was served a glass of orange juice I went back to Suzette’s seat and fetched my half of burrito.  It was perfect, a round tube of scrambled eggs around a tube of mildly seasoned stewed pork.  I order a hot tea and poured some of my orange juice into it to give it a slightly sweet citrus flavor and gobbled down my one-half burrito.

When we arrived at Dallas, we picked up our rental car and drove to Billy’s house where he was waiting for us with fresh mushrooms, fennel and oysters.  He started milk cooking and sliced mushrooms and added them to the stew pot, then I sliced fennel and he added that.  I then went to the garden in the back yard and picked a handful of lemon thyme and plucked the leaves and chopped about 1/1/2 tsp. of fresh thyme leaves and we threw that into the stew.  Billy had bought a fresh loaf of French bread that he sliced and brunched with olive oil sautéed in olive oil that he put into the small electric toaster oven. Then Billy opened a quart container and pint container of fresh Gulf oysters he had purchased at Central Market and added them to the stew.  Then he and I went to the wine fridge just off the kitchen and we selected a Laxas Albarino to drink with the stew.  I opened it and poured a little bit for Suzette to taste and she immediately screwed up her face into a puckering way and said that I needed to try the wine.  I took a sip and instead of that light citrusy flavor I expected, got a slightly sour flavor I associate with oxidized wine.  So we looked at each other decided to try another bottle.  Billy said he would use the wine for cooking and said to open another bottle.  We went back to the wine fridge and picked a bottle of Crémant du Bourgogne sparkling wine and opened it.  I was instantly hit with its clean French chardonnay flavor and lightness due to the champagne fermentation.

Suzette wanted to sit outside, so Billy fetched the electric blower and blew the tree buds off the porch and table and chairs, while I poured glasses.  We each ladled a bowl of oyster stew and poured glasses of Crémant and had a delicious meal at the table on the raised patio overlooking Billy and Elaine’s lovely back yard with slices of the garlic bread.

After lunch we napped for about an hour and then dressed and made the one hour drive to Fort Worth and arrived at the Kimbell Museum.  When we got out of our car, we saw Vhal Jackson, my ex-wife Amy’s husband, and his son Aaron were leaving the museum.  We expressed our delight at seeing each other and said we would see them at 7:00 p.m. at the rehearsal dinner and went into the Kimbell at 5:00 p.m. for its Friday evening opening.  As we entered the Clark Museum Exhibit we were again surprised to see Marta Gaines, Amy’s mother who had driven into Fort Worth with Amy for Nick’s wedding.  We said hello to her and her friend, Cathy?, and then wandered around the exhibit.   The Clark’s collection, housed in Williamstown, Massachusetts, included mostly French Impressionist art.  There were many Monets and Renoirs, but there were also a goodly number of other artists’ works starting with Jean-Leon Gérôme’s great “Snake Charmer”, a lovely nude by Bouguereau, and Camille Corot’s “Bathers of the Borromean Isles” from the Academic period through Paul Gaugin’s post-impressionist “Young Christian Girl” (1894).  My favorites included a Monet painting of a boat on a stormy sea and his great “The Cliffs at Eretat”, an early Renoir painting of a sea in reds and blues that preceded Fauvism by thirty years and two self-portraits of Renoir, and lots of other great paintings by artists such as Morrisot, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cassatt, Sisley, and many others.

We did not finish until 6:30 and then it was time to go to the rehearsal dinner.  We arrived the small converted chapel at Joe T. Garcia’s on north Commerce at around 7:00 p.m. Joe T’s is a Fort Worth institution.  The restaurant was started by Joe T. Garcia and his wife, Jessie, in 1935 and has grown from a seating capacity of 16 to 1600 seats over the last 75 years, as more and more buildings and patios have been added.  The best items on the menu as far as I am concerned are the cheese enchiladas and refried beans.  I remember my first trip to Joe T.’s, a field trip for my McLean Junior High School Spanish class with Miss Poindexter.  The enchiladas bathed in red chili sauce and smothered in cheese and baked until softened to a pastry like consistency and creamy refried beans, creamed with lard, were the same tonight as they were 50 years ago.  That is the secret of Joe T’s consistency of great recipes.  The other secret of Joe T’s is the hospitality.  Joe T was famous for his hospitality and after his death in1953, his children and grand children and great grand children have carried on that hospitality.  Almost every table was filled with pitchers of margaritas and lots of happy, laughing people. 

It is amazing to me how a simple formula of consistently good simple food like enchiladas and beans and friendly hospitality can create such a huge success.

But back to the party, when we arrived, we were greeted by Amy and Vhal.  Me met Carter Llewelyn and his wife, Mary and soon lots of other folks started arriving, mostly thirty year old children of old friends who I did not know, who grew up or were friends with or worked with Brooke and Nick.  I did meet Nick’s aunt, Tinker Goggans Ross?, who now has two children and lives in Plano.  I talked to and sat beside Lindsay Holland, who I had remembered from poetry readings at the Fort Worth Art Museum days and Ted Gorski who is still a staff attorney for the City of Fort Worth and doing land use planning law.  I talked to Rick Goggans, Nick’s dad, for a while, who is still very busy as a psychiatrist in Maine and engaging conversationalist while maintaining his low keyed psychiatrist demeanor.  But mainly we sat and watched the younger folks swirl around the room re-connecting.  I spoke to H.O., who is from San Miguel de Allende and works with Nick at @Umbel and found out that in the ten years since I last saw Nick in New York, when he had recently quit working as an assistant for Charlie Rose and was then working in an art gallery, that he has become the C.E.O. of a hot new digital media startup that assists advertisers target their ads and utilize social media information the way Neilsen monitors television viewing.

Finally at 10:00 p.m. we said goodbye to Amy’s sister, Cissie, who is Nick’s mother and Rick and took off for Dallas.  Thank god we had Suzette’s GPS trip app, because I made two wrong turns in the network of freeways that link north Fort Worth to north Dallas.              Adios.

March 27, 2012 Dinner - Chicken and more Chicken

March 27, 2012 Dinner - Chicken and more Chicken

We went to the Palmers for dinner tonight.  Susan cooked a five pound roasting chicken in a large covered clay pot with a medley of leeks, yellow Yukon and pomme de terre potatoes, and carrots.  As she described it you soak the large casserole in water until it absorbs a lot of moisture and then you start cooking at a high temp and then lower the temp and cook for a long time and during the last thirty minutes the liquid from the pot and the vegetables evaporates and the chicken and vegetables brown.  Susan made brown gravy from the deglazed cooking solids and liquids left in the casserole and blanched string beans while I made a Béarnaise Sauce, a la Julia Child, but with a White Balsamic that was sweeter than regular white wine tarragon vinegar.  Not being familiar with the Palmer’s electric stove and not wishing to have the sauce fail, I kept the heat very low and the sauce did not get drive off much liquid and did not get as thick and creamy as normal.

Susan and Suzette worked together to sauté a pile of halved Brussels sprouts in a skillet until slightly brown. We brought a bottle of Jacques Bourguignon Chablis 2009 from Trader Joe’s ($8.99) that was light and fruity but without much elegance.  The minerality and lightness did go well with the browned roasted chicken and vegetables though.

After Susan made strawberry short cake for dessert with fresh strawberries and angel food cakes from Costco and whipped cream, which I dowsed liberally with blackberry liqueur and ate with sips of Triple sec.

The other chicken refers to the new Sou Bite cooker Charlie had just purchased from Costco (about $300.00) in which he cooked several slabs of chicken over a one to two hour period.  The Sou Bite cooks sealed bags of food at a constant temperature in a water bath basin.  The flavor of the Sou Bite cooked chicken meat was very tender when it came out of the water bath but it soon lost its succulent texture after it cooled or was sautéed in butter.  The meat seemed to have a more tender texture than other methods of cooking that apply heat to the surface of meat, such as sautéing or grilling.

Charlie says he is going to try a steak next.  I left a pitcher of Béarnaise Sauce to eat with it.  .

 Bon Appétit

March 24, 2012 Dinner – Shrimp Scampi in a Tomato Mushroom Sauce on Linguine

March 24, 2012 Dinner – Shrimp Scampi in a Tomato Mushroom Sauce on Linguine

We met Amy at Farm and Table for lunch and Amy and I both ordered cheese enchiladas, with cottage fry potatoes and pinto beans.  The enchiladas were really clean tasting and the warm flour tortilla tasted as if made fresh.  Suzette ordered a quinoa salad with a round of sauteed goat cheese coated with panko that was also lovely.  Farm and Table is our new favorite restaurant for fresh vegetable oriented food.  We can hardly wait until its garden is in full production.

Since we had gardened and shopped and went to an auction and ate a big lunch at Farm and Table, we did not want to cook a big meal for dinner.  Since we had a lot of PPI Shrimp Scampi left from our March 23, 2012 dinner, we decided to add tomato sauce and mushrooms and make the scampi into a shrimp into a Marinara sauce.  So we poured some PPI Tomato Sauce into a skillet and heated up the scampi and threw in about five or six sliced baby portabella mushrooms and about 1 cup of cleaned fresh baby kale from the garden.  Suzette then added the PPI Shrimp Scampi and about ½ cup of PPI cream sauce made with the salmon and scallop poaching medium several nights ago.  This gave the tomato sauce a little creamier consistency and flavor. When the sauce was hot, we served the sauce over heated PPI linguine with a bottle of D’Aquiino Chianti Riserva 2006 from Trader Joe’s ($5.99?).  The dry chianti with a hint of tannic after taste was great with the shrimp in the creamy tomato sauce.

Bon Appétit