April 28, 2012 – Dinner – Rib eye steak with sautéed Mushrooms, roasted vegetables and asparagus
Max Aragon came by for dinner tonight around because he was picking up his partner, Jane, at the airport at and I invited him to dinner. I had thawed out one of the boneless rib eye steaks I had bought at Lowe’s for $3.98 per lb.I had some of the roasted vegetables left and some asparagus.I sliced about two cups of portabella mushrooms and two cloves of shallot and tossed them into a skillet with a Tbsp. of butter and a Tbsp. of olive oil and sautéed them for a minute and then cut the steak in half and put the steak into the skillet and cooked the steak and mushrooms for about ten minutes.Then I added about three Tbsp. of Italian Red Vermouth to the skillet. And sautéed the mixture about two or three minutes more as the Asparagus steamed.
I fetched a bottle of Cutler Creek Cabernet Sauvignon ($3.33 at Sunflower Market) and we had a deliciously tender steak stewed in vermouth and mushrooms with the heated roasted vegetables and the asparagus.
After dinner we had a few sips of French Calvados and Gemain Robin Apple Brandy and then around 10:00 p.m. Jane called and, after a sip or two more of Calvados, Max thanked me for dinner and left to go pick Jane up at the airport.
May 1, 2012 Lunch - Pho Miso soup; Dinner - Chicken feta sausage with asparagus and wild rice
After my meeting up near Sunflower Market at Juan Tabo and Montgomery, I went by to see what they had and bought white mushrooms, Chicken sausage with feta and asparagus.
I must say that I made an amazing soup for lunch today.I make soup about one or two times a week for lunch but never write about them because it is usually a combination of diverse unrelated items with noodles.Not very interesting.
But today was different.Today is started by trying to make a Miso soup with wakame seaweed and tofu cubes, a scoop of wild rice and some finely sliced green onions.Since I did not have white miso, I used brown miso and that gave the soup a wonderful flavor and thicker texture. I added the PPI vegetables and sautéed red Vermouth soaked mushrooms from Saturday night and that gave the soup a bit more flavor, but I was craving some meat and I did not have any until I realized I had frozen Vietnamese meat balls in the freezer.
So I fetched about three of them and threw them into the soup.After they had cooked a bit I slice each of them into five slices and threw them back to heat throughout.I put in about 1 Tbsp. f Pho seasoning from a bottle a bought at Ta Lin, which really busted the flavor up a couple more notches.After throwing in some more thinly sliced green onions I was ready to eat a great bowl of soup.
Diner was much simpler.After picking Suzette up at the airport and finding out she ws not hungry, I heated a pile of PPI cous cous with greens from the garden in the microwave and steamed several asparagus spears and steamed a fresh chicken and feta sausage with the asparagus and threw into the skillet I had used for the mushrooms and steak on Saturday evening and heated it until it was almost cooked and ate it with the a glass of Spanish Viura Marques de Montanana.Simple elegance.
April 29, 2012 Dinner – Soubice pork tenders with roasted vegetables and strawberry shortcake
I went to Charles and Susan Palmers for dinner.Charlie is experimenting with his new Soubice cooker. Tonight he cooked pork tenderloin entrecote.I brought over turnips from the garden.Susan had potatoes and carrots and shallots.She and I cut these up and threw them into a casserole dish with some garlic and roasted them for about an hour.
When the casserole was ready I removed the flat entrecote from the bags and sautéed them in butter for about one minute to heat them and flavor them and give them the appearance of having been sautéed.
Susan also made baked potatoes for Charlie and a salad with crumbed feta for us and opened a bottle of Norton Chilean Malbec Reserva that was really smooth.It was a delicious dinner.
After dinner we heaped some of the brandied strawberries I brought from home onto shortbreads Susan had bought and we covered them with whipped cream from a can I brought (Land O Lakes, Costco).
April 28, 2012 Dinner – Boneless Pork Chop with Wild Rice and Asparagus
Suzette is still out of town, so I made another super simple dinner tonight.
I thawed out one 1" thick boneless pork chop and salted it with coarse sea salt and ground pepper and sautéed it in a pan with about 1 1/2 Tbsp. of garlic infused olive oil that Eric, the chef at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery made for us. I put the heat at a a relatively high temperature so the meat would sear and I kept flipping it every couple of minutes for a total of about eaght minutes of cooking time. I undercooked the chop a bit, so the center was still pink and let it continue cook to white inside as it sat on the plate. This kept the juices inside
I steamed about 8 stalks of asparagus and heated a pile of wild rice in the microwave oven and then plated the asparagus and when the chop was cooked placed it on the plate with the heated wild rice and drank a glass of Tempranillo/Grenache Spanish Wine with it.
Fast, hot, and delicious.
After dinner, I had another glass of wine with a couple of slices of heated whole grain bread from Costco spread with Costco’s Celebrity fig compote infused goat cheese for a lovely light cheese course after dinner.
April 27, 2012 Lunch - La Salita; Dinner – Roast Duck and cous cous and kale
I went with Mike Verhagen to lunch at La Salita today and again ate my new favorite Mexican dish in Albuquerque; their Swiss Cheese filled Chili Relleno Dinner with green chili ($11.85).The Swiss cheese melts into the green chili sauce to make a wonderful picante cheesy sauce that I eat with the refried beans and the garnish of onions, tomato and lettuce.La Salita also has the best sopapilla I have eaten in Albuquerque in a long time.
Suzette left to celebrate her Mom‘s 85 Birthday in Pennsylvania this weekend so I am on survival rations from the PPIs in the fridge.I heated the extra two PPI duck wings left from the roasted duck dinner on April 25, 2012 with some of the Kale and Cous Cous from the April 26th dinner.
A great five minute meal with a glass of Tempranillo/Grenache Spanish wine and a slice of bread slathered with brie cheese afterwards. I am starting to substitute cheese for dessert to reduce my sugar intake.
April 26, 2012 Dinner -Rack of Lamb Chops with Kale and Cous Cous
Suzette was late in getting home because she had errands to run to get ready for her trip out of town over the weekend, so I prepared dinner.As you will see, the use of available ingredients and PPI make it possible to start cooking at around and have a delicious dinner ready in about ten minutes.
As it turned out I made the best cous cous I have ever made this evening.I picked 4 cups of fresh leaves ofkale from the garden and sliced the green portion of the leaves from the white stalk and sectioned the green leaves into about 1 ½ inch across pieces.I then sliced and chopped about 3 Tbs. of red onion and put it in a pot large enough to hold the cous cous and kale with 2 Tbs. of butter and heated it until the butter became frothy and the onion started to change color to white and softened (about five minutes).Then I added about two cups plus two oz. of water to the pot and about 1 tsp. of dehydrated Knorr chicken stock, instead of salt, and let the liquid come to a boil and then added the 10 oz. of cous cous and the 4 cups of Kale segments and covered the pot with a lid and put it on medium high heat to steam and then turned the heat down after a few minutes.
I then heated the sealed plastic bag with the PPI grilled Rack of lamb from the dinner on April 24, 2012 in the microwave at moderate heat for about 3 minutes until were hot.I then sliced the rack into chops and we served the chops with the cous cous/kale combination.The cous cous was moist and fluffy and the kale soft and cooked into soft mounds with threads of it throughout the cous cous.My impression is that the butter and sautéed onion combined with the kale and cous cous tasted far better together than if the kale and cous cous had been prepared separately.
We often combine tomatoes with cous cous.Cous cous is like tofu.It has very little natural flavor and is more about texture and its flavor is improved by the addition of other ingredients that add flavor to it.It just so happened that the steaming cooking method for fresh kale perfectly matched the steaming cooking method for cous cous to produce a perfect marriage of texture and flavor in this case.Ah, visions of Marrakesh.
We served the PPI Pinot Noir and Cutler Creek Cabernet Sauvignon for a delightful meal with bright conversation.After our simple dinner, I toasted two slices of whole grain bread from Costco and brought out the French brie (Costco) and Celebrity fig flavored goat cheese (Costco) and we finished the wine with bites of bread smeared with thick globs of the cheese.We shared our respective professional travails with each other; giving the other advice and new perspective based upon our years of experience in our respective professions.The sharing of ideas and support for each other’s careers plus both being able to create great food together are two of the reasons I think we have such a wonderful relationship.
This meal illustrates another benefit from cooking simply with PPI and available fresh ingredients.The food is simple but exquisite and does not get in the way of conversation.
April 24, 2012 Lunch – Japanese Kitchen; First Candle Lit Dinner in the Garden of the Year – Grilled Rack of Lamb with Roasted Vegetables and Steamed Asparagus.
I ate lunch with Robert Mueller at Japanese Kitchen in my continuing quest for new and more wonderful restaurants.Robert suggested that Japanese Kitchen had a really good and generous chirashi.We both ordered it and when it came I was amazed when we were served two lacquer boxes stacked one on the other.In one was the traditional sushi ricetopped with a pile of salmon eggs, a piece of grilled unagi and a small pile of pickled umabashi plums.The other box had a bed of shredded diakon on a layer of ice cubes.The diakon was topped with an assortment of slices of sashimi, including 2 thick slices of salmon and three slices of maguro red tuna, two slices of octopus tentacle, one surf clam, two slices of omelet, several slices of baby hot house cucumber, one slice of red snapper or mahi mahi, two pieces of squid roll, one scallop, a pile of squid salad, and one large slice of yellowtail. We nibbled and talked for over an hour enjoying the many different delicacies.I thought it was an entirely delicious food experience ($18.00).
Last Saturday, when Suzette was out of town, I bought a Rack of Lamb because it is one of Suzette’s favorite meats ($9.99/lb at Costco, an eight chop rack is about $16.00).Although we had each been working hard, Tuesday is a mandatory night to cook, since we both are usually at home, so I took the rack out to thaw before going on an 18 mile bike ride that did not get me home until
Suzette was at home with I returned and we decided to roast some potatoes and Brussels sprouts.So I cleaned and sliced about 1 cup of Brussels sprouts and cubed into about 1 inch cubes about three or four baking potatoes and one large brown onion and cut up about five or six cloves of garlic and tossed that all with about 1 ½ Tbs. of garlic infused olive oil Suzette had made in a ceramic casserole dish and covered them with aluminum foil and baked them for about 45 minutes in a 350° oven and then I threw in four or five sprigs of fresh rosemary and baked them for about another 15 minutes while Suzette grilled the rack of lamb and I steamed about fifteen stalks of asparagus.
I fetched a bottle of Valréas “Cuvée Prestige” 2008 Côtes du Rhône Villages (75% Grenache and 25% Syrah, Trader Joe’s $5.99?) that went really well with the smoke flavored grilled lamb and the garlicy roasted vegetables.I dowsed the lamb with some mint sauce we made from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking that had a lot of vinegar and some sugar in it that accentuated the flavor of the meat a bit more.Since I was a little tired from my ride I toasted a couple of slices of whole grain bread from Costco and slathered one with the juices from the lamb that had accumulated when we covered the rack of lamb with aluminum foil after taking it off the grill to let it seal in its juices.
Suzette lit candles in the chandelier in the gazebo and we had our first meal of the year in the garden in the warm glow of candle light.What a lovely meal.
I was still a little hungry so I fetched the wedge of French triple crème brie and slathered the other slice of bread with it and we finished the bottle of wine with bread and cheese.
A lovely French meal on a lovely cool spring evening in our garden.What could be better?
