Things wot I Made Then Ate: March 2015

Pork green chile, flour tortillas

After all that flavoring in the cooking broth I found that going back to straight plain commercial beef broth to dip the sandwich in tastes better. After half the sandwich was dipped in the plain beef broth, I drank it.

So, soup and sandwich right there.

The history of this sandwich is unknown for certain. Claimant versions vary. So let's not bother with legend about something so common as roasted beef in sandwich form. It's irrelevant if the insight was accidental, like dropping a sandwich into broth and eating it anyway. People are already having their roasted beef and gravy and bread and presumably potatoes all over the place. The elements are right there on plates all over the world. The idea of dipping would occur several places at once and the idea take hold as it will as a matter of exposure and of exchange.

The discovery needn't have occurred in France solely and it needn't have be made by a Frenchman although it could have been, but I look at it this way, French bread with its wide open crumb and it natural leaven is unparalleled but the famous loaves last only a day. Those long baguettes that you get must be consumed that night for their excellence is evanescent and the next day the bread will no longer be soft with a thin light tender crusty exterior. That explains why French cooks have so many clever uses for slightly stale bread. They have so many recipes and ideas that are better with stale bread than they are with fresh bread. This dipping sandwich falls into that category: "Clever things French Cooks Do With Slightly Stale Bread." The sandwich's actual factual multiple origins are irrelevant.

Shrimp and grits with okra

Broccoli and potato soup

The light is quite low, the white balance is yellow, and the ISO unbearably high, eeew, we hate it that high and every food element is unappealingly old and on its last leg, potato had buds growing out its eyes, the onion growing a stalk, the garlic clove growing one too, the broccoli opened and fading to yellow languishing down there in the crisper for weeks and the chicken broth sitting idle on the refrigerator shelf for over a week possibly two. I actually smelled the broth before using it to check if it reeked. Everything is questionable and yet this soup is satisfying beyond description. With its butter and vermouth sauce in seconds, it hits the spot precisely and I wonder why I didn't do this earlier, singe a few vegetables to char and bring the whole pile to a boil.

Basil pasta and salmon salad

The basil is not an accent, it is extremely breathy almost like Vick's VapoRub®, very much like mint in excess but not so breathy as cilantro would be used in this volume. It is a key element in one's superpower of minty-fresh breath. The whole time I was eating this I was thinking, "Man, this is incredible. I wonder why I never see this. Why isn't it popular?"

If this were Chopped then I would win.

But then Scott Conant will say tactfully, "This is a very good salad. I enjoyed it a lot except for the part about way too much basil. My Nonna was an excellent cook who used basil throughout and she always said be careful not to use too much basil or else it tends to overpower and you certainly do not want that."

Then I'll say, "Do I look like your Nonna, Scott? I'm doing something different over here."

I'm scrounging, that's what I'm doing.

Grapes would be better but I do not have grapes. These raisins are excellent. They add sweetness and chewiness

Basil from the Aerogarden. I also have basil growing in potting mix. It was started months ago in preparation for Spring but it is way ahead of schedule in its little plant nursery cups.

There is a lot left over but not with basil. All that basil went to this one little saucer.

I can continue to add things to the remainder as I go along changing each plate as I prepare it. One plate with avocado, another with corn, yet another with broccoli or beans for example.

Quijote's salad

That's what you see when you open the styrofoam box except a lot brighter and fresher. This is unfair. I brought this home with other things, refrigerated it, then hours later photographed it.

Quijote's is a small restaurant a short distance south of me on Broadway, away from the museum, away from the Capitol.

I saw the place tucked in there as if it had been there in Mayberry since 1960's and wondered why I hadn't noticed before. I meant to go in, twice, but it was closed. Finally I checked its hours placard see they are limited. The woman inside by conversation volunteered they intend to expand to dinner hours, by her abbreviated story, based upon one customer saying, "I need you to be open."

How accommodating.

That would have been a composite example of one factor affecting their decision, cash flow, of course, being the unspoken main reason.

They inhabit that odd restaurant niche that is more than street food but not quite a proper restaurant. The styrofoam packages, American bento, puncture easily with sturdy plastic fork. I don't like both those picnic things. They don't fit in my backpack. That's for to-go. You can stay there if you want but you still have the styrofoam bento and plastic utensil.

They speak Spanish to each other in there, and Spanish and English to me. They are uncommonly gracious among the already uncommonly gracious shopkeepers and clerks all along this entire street. And I mean it. That is my experience every single day.

Google Earth has made it all clear to me while creating another mystery. I have been in here before under the guise of a different restaurant. It was Luciano's before, and I am not surprised that they went out of business. *whispers* We didn't like it. It was a noisy place that seemed loosely run and the pizza made by high school hires with little training and tremendous indifference was crap. We do better at home. It was discouraging. I'm glad they're gone, and good luck to Quijote's.

The new mystery is why did Google Earth Street view show me Quijote's the first time when I typed [1055 broadway, denver, colorado] and go straight to it, then show me earlier Luciano's the second time without me doing anything different, without adjusting its history? Cool this is done, but how?

Windows on a building say so much, don't they? You can always approximate the date of the last serious renovation.