November 9, 2015 Pork and beef Stroganoff and haricot vert

November 9, 2015 Pork and beef Stroganoff and haricot vert 

Tonight’s meal was one of the those magical events that comes together only seldomly, a perfect meal made from disparate PPI parts.  We had about 1½ cups of PPI French onion soup and a bag of PPI Cassarecce pasta sitting in the fridge plus about ½ lb. of chunks of pork that we did not use for last night’s meal, plus Cynthia left the rest of a tub of sour cream that she had brought for the salmon canapés.  Suzette’s genius as a recreational therapist is to see connections where others do not and to put different elements together into programs.  Tonight she proved her genius when she came up with the perfect menu idea, “Let’s make beef Stroganoff.”

We have three kinds of mushrooms, white, chanterelles, and Hungarian blacks, so we had a lovely combination and enough mushrooms for the dish.

I cubed the pork and sliced a medley of the three mushrooms and fetched the sour cream and we were ready to cook.  

I then snapped the ends off about a cup of haricot vert and steamed them in the steamer while Suzette cooked the stroganoff.

Suzette used the lovely large French copper sauté pan we had used to cook the pork tapa dish last night.  She started by sautéing the pork and then the mushrooms in butter.

Then she added the onion soup and about 2/3 cup of sour cream and we immediately had a decent looking stroganoff but the sauce was a little thin, so Suzette cooked it for about five more minutes until the sauce thickened and the ingredients became more integrated.

I opened the bottle of 2012 Chateau St. Michelle Pinot Gris that Jeff and Debbie brought last night, with its slightly sweet fruitiness went perfectly with the creamy slightly tangy stroganoff sauce.

Suzette heated the PPI Cassarecce pasta in the microwave and put some in pasta bowls, then ladled the stroganoff onto the pasta, and finally garnished the top of the stroganoff with a handful of the steamed haricot vert.  It made pretty plate of food that was equally lovely to eat.

A fabulous dinner created with little effort, but a huge flash of brilliance of menu therapy.

For dessert I ate PPI baked chocolate pudding with PPI crème anglais left over from our meal with Carey and Peter on Saturday evening.  Suzette had a bit of PPI vanilla ice cream from last night’s dinner as we watched the news and the Antiques Roadshow.

Bon Appetit 

November 7, 2015 Four helpings of refried beans. Lunch – La Salita, Dinner – Pink Grouper in aluminum foil, refried Black Beans and rice

November 7, 2015 Four helpings of refried beans. Lunch – La Salita, Dinner – Pink Grouper in aluminum foil, refried Black Beans and rice.

Even though I had lax, cream cheese, onion and capers on Bosque Bakery French sour dough bread for breakfast, I was hungry by 11:30, so I started my grocery shopping run by driving to La Salita for a platter of two Swiss cheese filled chili Rellenos with double refried beans, garnish and onions.  I had to force myself to finish it, not because it was not incredibly delicious, but because I simply could not eat all the wonderful food I found before me.  I was seated in the second dining room at around 12:00 and no one else came, so I enjoyed reading the incredible story of the law student’s journey from Syria to Sweden in the October 26, 2015 New Yorker in peace and quite, although the owner came by and said, “I see you have a private dining room today.”

After lunch I drove to Talin.  We had decided to bake fish in foil for dinner, so I was looking for a fresh Mexican fish.  I faced a dilemma when I arrived at the fish department because I was confronted by three likely candidates, red snapper, monkfish, and pink grouper.  I finally decided that the grouper looked the best and would be the best value because it would yield more meat per pound, so I bought a two pound steak.  My favorite fishmonger descaled  and cleaned the larger of the two fish and cut me my desired steak. I also bought sprouts, and a couple more shallots.

Then I drove to Gruet Winery and Justin prepared my quarterly wine club order while I sipped a glass of Rose brut champagne.  I sat beside a couple of wine aficionados visiting from Columbus, Ohio who mentioned Camino Real Winery, so I mentioned the Greenhouse Bistro and drew them directions to the bistro and winery and also suggested they go to Milagros winery and drew them directions to it also.  After I drank about half of my glass of rose I realized I was a pretty lucky guy to be able to enjoy all this wonderful food and wine.  

I drove to Ranch Market to get the rest of the things we needed for dinner, including two large cans of refried black beans, ground cojita cheese, Latin American crema, carrots, avocados, and a red bell pepper.  I also bought smoked pork chops, heads on shrimp, apples, and limes.  

I arrived home by 3:00 and put a bottle of Gruet 2010 Blanc de Blanc champagne and a bottle of Gruet rose into the fridge to chill and collapsed into bed and slept for a few minutes even though TCU was playing OSU.  Unfortunately, TCU played badly and fell behind, due to several interceptions, so watching the game became of secondary importance. 

At 4:00 Suzette arrived and we went to work in the garden for a few minutes.  We covered part of the mint and chard.  Then we started cooking, but we were both tired and by 5:30, when Carey and Peter arrived, we still had not made much progress.  Thank goodness Peter and Carey were more energized than us.  

Also, Because Carey is such a good cook, it was easy to integrate her into the cooking process.  Actually both she and Peter have had cooking careers.  Peter was a cook in the marine corps and after his military service for a while.

I was making my Baked Chocolate pudding for dessert.  Here is the recipe, except I added thee extra egg yolks 1/3 cup extra chocolate chips, only ¾ cup of sugar, a dash of Grand Marnier, and a dash of vanilla.  I separated the egg whites and Carey whisked them into a soft mound, but we did not stiffen them enough and I could not bind them into the chocolate mixture properly.  Also I used one bowl instead of two to save time and one hour at 350 was not a sufficiently long baking time to fully bake the dessert, so it turned out to be a deliciously gooey half baked molten torte.  Unfortunately, we needed to bake the aluminum pockets, so we removed the chocolate torte  in its Bain Marie from the oven after one hour.  Next time I will turn on the gas burner and keep cooking it on top of the stove

One of the reasons I had trouble with the dessert is because I helping with the other two dishes.  I filleted and cut the grouper into chunks, while Carey and Suzette chopped onion, carrots, a tomato, and garlic and a pimiento from our garden and butter and white  wine and wrapped the ingredients with aluminum foil into wrapped pockets.  

While they worked on the fish dish, I went to the basement and found the avocado leaves.  I also opened the can of beans and added one tsp. of dried Mexican oregano and avocado leaves to the beans.  Carey and Suzette chopped garlic and added it to the beans and I moved the PPI basmati rice from its aluminum sauce pan to a plastic bowl with a cover and put it into the microwave. 

Finally everything sort of came together.  The fish pockets cooked, the black beans integrated al their flavors, so Suzette heated the rice in the microwave and I opened and poured the Gruet rose.  We also made buttered toast with slices of Fano baguette for Peter.

Carey and Suzette garnished the black beans with chopped avocado and cilantro, and sprinkled cojita cheese on it to make a beautiful presentation.  Suzette spooned rice into the aluminum pockets to mix with the light wine and vegetable broth sauce.  

It was Carey’s  birthday, plus they are within days of leaving to start their new life in the Azores, so Peter and Carey were in a great mood and that elevated the excitement around the food, which I thought was also terrific.  We talked and ate and drank rose.  Carey had not ever tasted the Gruet rose and was surprisingly pleased with its blend of Chenin Blanc and Pinot Noir.

The beans were so delicious, I took a second helping. Or should I say a fourth helping of beans.

After dinner Suzette served bowls of the gooey chocolate dessert garnished with PPI crème anglais and I poured the Gruet 2010 Blanc de Blanc, which tasted better and more full bodied than I had remembered it being.  Dessert was incredible. I loved it and Peter and I took seconds. 

Finally a bit after 9:00 we all began to crash, so we said goodnight.

Bon Appetit and Bon Voyage

November 6, 2015 Dinner – Mapo Dofu

November 6, 2015 Dinner – Mapo Dofu 

Mohan Johal came for dinner.  I decided to make Mapo Dofu, a Szechuan stew made with tofu (Dofu), pork, eggplant, onion, wood ear, garlic, ginger, and chili.  I usually add mushrooms and tonight was no exception.

Last Tuesday I had gone to Talin for grouper and bought a nice Chinese eggplant, a plastic Tibet of tofu, and fresh ginger.  At 6:00 after an all day seminar, I came home and  covered the chard bed in the garden with plastic.  Then, I used the defrost setting on our new microwave to thaw two pork chops. 

I made 1½ cups of basmati rice with the addition of a little chicken stock and some dried lilly flowers.  

Suzette came home and fetched two of the Thai chilis we grew in our garden and deseeded them and then cleaned the kitchen.  When Mohan came he helped me chop chili and about three Tbsp. of garlic, while I sliced  the eggplant into 2 inch long and ½ inch wide  rectangles and diced the pork, an onion, about 2 Tbsp. of ginger and sliced 5 white mushrooms. I then got sliced wood ear and three dried Shitake mushrooms and soaked them in hot water for about 20 minutes to rehydrate.  I fetched my wok and heated it with about three Tbsp. of peanut oil and a couple of dashes of sesame oil.

I then Sautéed the meat, garlic, and ginger in the hot peanut oil to which I added a  tsp. of chili garlic paste until the meat began to change color and then I added the eggplant, chilis, and sliced mushrooms and sautéed and folded that mixture for about fifteen to twenty minutes until all the ingredients began to look cooked and had softened.

While the ingredients cooked I sliced the rehydrated Shitake mushrooms and cubed about 8 oz. of medium firm tofu.  I then added the tofu, wood ear, and sliced shitakes and the soaking liquid to the mixture in the wok plus a little extra water to bring the level of liquid in the wok up to about the top of the ingredients, so they could  stew, and covered the wok and let the ingredients stew for about another twenty minutes. 

While the ingredients stewed I made a thickening sauce with about 2Tbsp. of Chinese Rice Cooking  wine, 1 Tbsp. Soy sauce, 1 tsp. sesame oil, 2 Tbsp. of cornstarch, and about ½ cup water.  

    The line of the usual suspects found in the thickening sauce

While the ingredients stewed I went to the basement and found the bag of Szechuan peppercorns and deseeded about 1 Tbsp. of them.

Finally, after twenty minutes of stewing, Suzette stirred in the thickening sauce and after a minute or two of re-heating the mixture, we were ready to eat.

Suzette fetched pasta bowls and silverware, napkins and chop sticks and I went to the garage to fetch ginger beers.  We each served ourselves rice and Mapo Dofu and I garnished my dish with crushed Szechuan peppercorns.  We all enjoyed this simple, but delicious dish and Suzette and Mohan took seconds, so I considered the dish a success.

Bon Appetit

November 5, 2015 dinner - Poached Keka Salmon with a Barley, Chanterelle mushroom, and Brussels sprouts Casserole

November 5, 2015  dinner -  Poached Keka Salmon with a Barley, Chanterelle mushroom, and Brussels sprouts Casserole 

I worked all day at home until 3:00 when it warmed and the wind subsided, so I rode to Rio Bravo and back. The storm had cleared and the sun shown brightly on the Sandias. Here is a picture.

At 5:30 I started dinner after talking to Suzette and finding out she was almost home from her drive to Santa Rosa.

I wanted to make a hearty casserole that combined the Brussels Sprouts, I had bought at Sprouts last week with a grain.  I discussed it with Suzette and we decided I needed to cook the grain first.  I went to the basement and fetched the jar of hulled barley and cooked 1 cup of it for about Forty minutes in two cups of chicken stock.  While the barley cooked , Suzette arrived, I cleaned the pound of Brussels Sprouts.  We  discussed other ingredients for the casserole and decided upon chanterelle mushrooms.  Onions and garlic were givens, so I diced up 2/3 of a medium onion, 2 small heads of garlic from our garden, and about five or six chanterelles, which vary widely in size.  Suzette fetched the ceramic casserole and I sprinkled the ingredients with sea salt, white pepper, and Spanish olive oil and then we stirred in the barley.  Suzette showed me how to set the oven controls and we set the oven on convect bake and 350 degrees and covered the casserole with aluminum foil and baked it for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes of baking the casserole was still not close to being baked so we put it in for another 30 minutes uncovered after I added ¼ cup of chicken broth.  While it cooked I diced about 6 oz. of fresh mozzarella and 2 oz. of Pecorino Romano cheeses and we spread the cheese on the top of the casserole and baked the casserole for the rest of the 30 minutes.  By the end of the second 30 minutes of convection baking, the casserole was fully cooked and the cheese had melted to a lovely golden brown in raised areas.  Here is a picture. 

I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of Santiago Station Argentinean Sauvignon Blanc (Total Wine $3.99 less 15% or $3.39). We had decided to poach the 1 pound salmon filet.  Since we had the PPI stock left from the steam cooking of the Grouper and the mushroom cream sauce from Tuesday’s mealI, we put those in a large skillet and we added about 1/3 cup of the Sauvignon Blanc to make a poaching medium.

Suzette took over and cleaned and dried the salmon filet and put it in the the skillet and covered the skillet to develop steam and poached the salmon for about 20 minutes, while I worked a bit more after I placed the bottle of wine in our new freezer. 

When the fish had poached and the casserole baked completely, Suzette called me to dinner.

   Here is the salmon in its poaching medium.

I loved the casserole and fish poached in the PPI mushroom cream sauce.  The mushroom cream sauce contained chard from our garden, which was an extra special surprise because it had cooked to perfection in the poaching process.  It had been tough in the mushroom cream sauce because we had added it late in the process and it did not fully cook.

The Keka salmon, which was wild caught, had been $4.99 at Sprouts. Suzette said she did not like it's firmer texture and larger slabs of flesh, but I enjoyed it.  I had bought a can of whole berry cranberry sauce ($.99 at Lowe’s).  

Suzette plated the salmon and casserole and I poured the wine, which had chilled nicely in the twenty minutes in the new freezer, and we spooned cranberry sauce onto our plates.  I think if you told Suzette she had her choice of salmon or turkey with cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, she would choose salmon. That is how much she likes that combination.  The Shurfine whole berry cranberry sauce was thick and not too sweet.  I liked dinner a lot, especially the heavier casserole with its melted cheeses. 

After dinner I worked until 10:20 to finish drafting a pleading and went to bed.

Bon Appetit 

November 3, 2015 Lunch – Que Huong, Dinner - steam baked Pink Grouper, Penne Pasta in a mushroom Cream Sauce with chard

November 3, 2015 Lunch – Que Huong, Dinner -  steam baked Pink Grouper, Penne Pasta in a mushroom Cream Sauce with chard 

I joined Aaron Lohmann at Que Huong for lunch around 12:30.  He ordered a wonderful dish of stir fried flat rice noodles and shrimp and I ordered my favorite dish of Bun with Grilled pork and Fried Egg Rolls.  Here are pictures of my bun.

After lunch I went across the street to Talin to see if there was fresh grouper and there was.  I bought a 1 lb. piece from my favorite fish monger who has prepared fish for me at Talin for over twenty- five years.  Here is his picture.

   Note the pink grouper 

I also bought some Yu Choy, ginger, a Chinese Eggplant, tofu, bamboo shoots, and hoisin sauce. 

After signing the sub-lease for Birdland to become a marijuana dispensary I went home and rode to Montano and back.

When Suzette came home we discussed dinner.  She wanted to prepare the fish in the steam convection oven.  We decided to make a cream sauce with the three different types of mushrooms, chanterelles, Hungarian Blacks and white mushrooms.  We wanted a green vegetable, so we decided to use some chard from the garden and thyme, so I picked a few sprigs of thyme and a handful of chard and de-stemmed the chard and pulled the leaves from the thyme stems.  I chopped a shallot and three cloves of garlic from our garden.

Suzette put a pot on to boil and then added the penne pasta.

I filleted the grouper into two filets and Suzette steam baked the fish with a few pads of butter in the steam convection oven on a setting of easy bake 21.  The fish turned out interesting.  It had a firm outside but was tender and juicy inside.  I don’ think I have ever had fish like it before. 

After Suzette put the fish in the steam oven, she Sautéed the shallots and garlic in butter and olive oil and then added the mushrooms and thyme.  She added about ½ cup of heavy Cream and a bit of white wine and let the sauce reduce somewhat and finally added the chard leaves and covered the skillet to steam the chard into submission. 

We drained the penne in the sink.  Then Suzette filled pasta bowls with penne and placed a filet in each bowl and ladled mushroom cream sauce.  I opened a bottle of white Cotes du Rhone and we toasted slices of Fano French baguette and enjoyed a lovely meal.

Bon Appetit 

November 2, 2015 Dinner – Steam Baked Pork Chops, Convection Baked Acorn Squash, and steamed Asparagus

November 2, 2015 Dinner – Steam Baked Pork Chops, Convection Baked Acorn Squash, and steamed Asparagus.

Both Suzette and I had busy days, she drove to Santa Rosa and I filed a motion with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

I did not eat a salad for lunch until 4:00 and she had a root beer float at Clines Corners on the road back from Santa Rosa, so we were hungry, but not hungry.  

I thawed two Pork chops out and at around 6:15 we began to cook.  We are experimenting with our new kitchen appliances, mainly the new steamer oven and new stove oven.  Suzette decided to bake the pork chops in the steamer oven, which I believe is meant to sense moisture in food and adjust moisture in the oven.  Suzette checked the guide and for pork chops the recommended settings were 2o minutes at 320 To 360 degrees.  She set the timer for 20 nMinutes at 340 degrees.  

I asked Suzette what wine she wanted to drink with the pork chops and she said “Rose.” So I went to the basement and found a bottle of La Ferme Julien, a 2012 Appellation Ventoux Controlle from the Rhone Valley of France.  This is one of the best dry roses for the money (Trader Joe’s $5.99).

It has a dry,yet fruity flavor.  It is one of my favorites for simple ingredients cooked simply, such as grilled pork chops. We usually drink rose with pork.

Before we started baking the pork chops we addressed the starch and decided to bake an acorn squash I bought at Sprouts last Tuesday.  I cut it in half and de-seeded it and cut the end off the pointed end so it would sit flat on a cookie sheet.  Suzette then filled the two halves with choppedprunes, diced Apple, about 1 Tbsp. of chopped onion and about 1-2 tsp. of butter each.  Then she baked the squash halves in the new Bertazzoni oven for about an hour at 350 degrees on the convection bake setting.

While everything was baking, I snapped the ends off about 20 stalks of asparagus and Suzette steamed them on top of the stove in our steamer.

I took the Bearnaise sauce from the fridge and smeared some on the asparagus and we were ready to eat. 

Everything was ready by around 7:30, so we plated up and watched the Antiques Roadshow in Tulsa and the at 8:00 in Chicago.  Finally at 9:00 my new favorite show, “I’ll Have Phil Is Having” came on and I poured a glass of Calvados and grabbed a chocolate truffle.  This week he was going to his favorite restaurants in his adopted home of L.A.  One of the things that makes the show fun and entertaining is Phil’s inclusion of his friends and family.  This week he started with a double date with Ray Romano, his friend from their hit show, “Everyone Loves Raymond”, which Phil wrote and their wives at The Farmers Market on Wilshire.  Later in the show he met Norman Lear and Paul Reiser at Langer’s Delicatessen for what Phil described as “the best Pastrami Sandwich in the World, number 19 on the menu.” Said with a good deal of reverence.

The show ended with a visit to Homeboy Bakery that provides jobs and assistance to mostly Hispanics out of a life mired in gang violence, which apparently is an organization Phil supports.  In the middle of the show Phil visited Huckleberry Bakery in Santa Monica, owned by his fellow writer on the show and his daughter.  

There is always a segment of the show with Phil’s parents and this week his Dad visited him in L.A. And they went to a Deli in Malibu that according to Phil makes the best turkey sandwich in the world because you can sit on the patio and enjoy the great weather.  The they call his mom back in N.Y. on Skype, who is enjoying a vacation from Phil’s Dad.  One of the reasons why I like the show is Phil’s unabashedly joyous Jewish or N.Y. humor.  He and Ray Romano both grew up in Queens and they live that connection all the time.

At 10:00 after a great evening of TV we went to bed.

Bon Appetit 

October 30, 2015 Lunch – East Ocean, Dinner – Roasted Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

October 30, 2015 Lunch – East Ocean, Dinner – Roasted Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

Today after I went to the Law Library, I went to East Ocean at noon for my favorite scallop dish, Scallops in Lobster Sauce with fried rice and Sweet and Sour Chicken.  But today’s preparation was interesting in a bad way.  Too much cornstarch had been added to the egg drop soup and it over thickened the sauce which did three bad things: it make the sauce not have its usual lovely texture and sheen, it did not mix well with the other ingredients, and it had a distinctly different flavor, more of cornstarch.  I love this dish because when it is cooked properly, the milk of the cooking scallop chunks blends with the cooking juices of the pork and green onion and the chicken and egg flavors of the egg drop soup to make an elegantly complex sauce that flows to mix perfectly with the fried rice.

For dinner, I asked Suzette to bring home a Roasted Chicken prepared by the Greenhouse Bistro at the Center for Ageless Living.

She arrived at around 3:30 and assisted Jose, our cabinet maker, with some design details in the kitchen remodel.  We agreed to roast some of the  vegetables we had for dinner, including a 2 Shishito peppers, a pimiento and three small eggplants we had picked from our garden, plus ½ of a large sweet potato and one small onion and a red cipolini onion plus three small heads of garlic from our garden.  Suzette went to the garden and picked a small handful of fresh oregano.   

Suzette took over the cooking from here and salted and sprinkled and tossed the vegetables in olive oil.  Then we read our new Bertizonni stove manual and decided to roast the vegetables on the convection bake setting for twenty minutes covered and then twenty minutes uncovered.  

Suzette heated the two leg quarters of chicken in the microwave and we each filled our plates with vegetables.  After we plated we returned the vegetables to the oven because Suzette thought they needed more cooking.  She was right they tasted better when I took seconds ten minutes later, so next time we will roast vegetables for 50 minutes on convection bake.

I opened a bottle of Santiago Station Sauvignon Blanc from the Mendoza Valley in Argentina; a simple wine for a simple dinner. 

We watched Ghostbusters, which is one of Suzette’s favorites, for a pleasant evening.  

Suzette was happy that we were finishing the remodel.  Jose hung the basement door and the door between my office and the TV room and put the black splashboard under the bottom of the cabinets and hung the spice rack and knife rack today, so things are looking much more finished.

We ate ice cream later in the evening.

I went to bed and Suzette stayed up to watch Ghostbusters II. 

Later I woke up and watched The Man Who Fell to Earth and Woodstock from 1:00 to 4:00.  Thank God some hipster is programming the late night movie channels for us aging baby boomers who do not sleep through the night.

Bon Appetit