Given that it's Lent and that I am a practicing Catholic and that it is Friday, it is clearly inevitable that I'd be having impure thoughts about a bone-in ribeye (oh, shut up). I am an omnivore and always have been, although the actual amount I consume of beef, poultry, etc. is pretty slim.
So it stands to reason today I should crave something the size of a hubcap.
Instead I must make do and try to get my umami blast elsehow. I am thinking of making ceviche. I was thinking also of making some hard-seared tuna, but that makes Trilby wince (or gag, I forget). Tuna is good when one is craving something in the meat family, but for one reason or another, that isn't about to happen. I'd make tuna tartare, which I think makes Trilby happy, but which TFBIM cannot stand.
So this gets me thinking of grilled mahi-mahi with peanut sauce or maybe a honey/chipotle/lime glaze, which might do instead of ceviche (I'd go with scallops--if I can get fresh ones--and/or shrimp, which are always available fresh) if the evening proves cooler than warmer. Naturally, either would pair well with scallion/coconut-infused jasmine rice and some seared leeks or spring onions spiked with a chile/ginger dressing.
Then, if the evening is warm, I'm figuring on some sort of melon sorbet with mint and ginger...and if it's cool (I mean, really, we hit 83F today), grilled pineapple slices with a rum and molasses glaze. Not sure about the wine, but I have a couple of bottles of 2003 Edna Valley Vineyards Paragon Sauvignon Blanc which suggest themselves.
A lot of people--even those who might say "yum"--cannot understand thinking this way every day (and twice on weekends). Me? It's just the way I think and it has the added felicity of keeping TFBIM from getting angry with me, or minimizing her wrath when she has had quite enough of my drivel.
Tonight I could have done no wrong. I made a spinach salad with pancetta & gorgonzola dressing (kinda rich, but a little goes a long way and the buttermilk in the dressing alleviates any remnant of guilt) and then Rigatoni alla Romagnola (a medium simmered tomato based sauce with a little bit of ground beef [¼lb. for 4 people] and acres of very finely diced onion, and shavings of parmigiano-reggiano...muy yummy) and damned if TFBIM didn't go for seconds. (Even Numbah One Son ate his serving without complaint...very high praise indeed)
Between the food and the wine (2001 Bosco Montepulciano d'Abruzzo) TFBIM only wanted a cappuccino for dessert and as such my evening's foodiness was complete. It only stands to reason I should be curling up in my fave chair with a cookbook: Schlesinger & Willoughby's Let The Flames Begin.
