The Pork Boys Do Tilapia Meunière

We are still enjoying the cooler weather down here in Texas, and with it our autumn-leaf plates and goblets, as well as matching mugs that M.P. happened to find at the store the other day.  Perfect.

Saturday night, M.P. decided to make us a simple dinner of patty melts and french fries.  The patty melts are one of his specialties, built from the bottom on a piece of Texas toast, then a well-seasoned beef patty simmered in beef bouillon for extra flavor, topped with a strip of bacon and slices of Swiss and cheddar cheese, and crowned with very thinly sliced tomatoes, and sautéed onions and bell peppers.  And then a little more cheese - Asiago - why not?  Talk about good!  Oh, my.

French fries are another of his specialties, at which he worked hard for years to discover the secret of making them soft, puffy, non-greasy, and delicious.  These we topped with beef gravy and shredded cheese - some of you fellow old-timers may fondly remember this festive combination as disco fries.

The meal was rounded out with fried Italian green beans - now fellas, you really haven't lived until you've tried these, and they are the simplest thing in the world to make.  Open a can of Italian green beans, the big flat ones.  Drain.  Dump in a greased or buttered skillet, medium-hot.  Sauté for five minutes or so, until they start to blister.  No need to brown them.  Remove from heat and serve with a dollop of pepper mayo, one of the most delightful things in the world - it's simply mayonnaise with a goodly helping of black pepper stirred in.  Marvelous.

By the way, some time ago we discovered the superiority of coarse-ground black pepper over the regular pulverized variety.  The coarse-ground tastes just the same, but looks even more appetizing on whatever you're eating.  And none of those little unexpected hard crunches that stick in your dental work, such as you get with hand-ground pepper.  To each his own, of course, but we highly recommend the coarse-ground for all black-pepper affairs.

Sunday was mainly a siesta day for both of us, but when M.P. finally got around to fixing supper, he did a fine job of it.  The main dish was one of our favorite things:  tilapia meunière.  And one of the easiest things in the whole world to make:  flour the fish, lay them in melted butter, and sautée a few minutes.  Take the fish out, add a splash of lemon juice to the remaining butter and heat a couple of minutes.  Pour it over the fish and serve right away.  Nothing to it, but oh soooo good!

Of course, we always think of dear Julia when we have meunière, and the delectable first meal she had on French soil:



Her husband Paul was so wise to encourage her in the culinary direction. I have likewise encouraged M.P.'s gastronomic aspirations over the years with gifts of cookbooks, including four of Julia's, three of Craig Claiborne's, and a volume of Escoffier in English. (I would have given him the Larousse Gastronomique too, if he could read French.) And I congratulate myself that this strategy has certainly worked out very well for my taste buds, in my position of Chief Guinea Pig for all M.P.'s creative efforts in the kitchen.

Of course, as Head Scullion and Potscrubber, I have to clean up after him, too - no small task. But the rewards are well worth the labors.  Julia's assertion - I like to eat! - is therefore a familiar saying at our house:



But back to our menu.  Along with the fish, M.P. tried out a tasty new dish - fried broccoli.  Not something I would ever have thought of - but surprisingly scrumptious!  Just chop it up, dip in egg batter and flour, and fry it like okra, fellas.  You'll love it.

M.P. also whipped cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and beer into a smooth and lovely rarebit to go over the broccoli.  Mmmmm.  I like to call it rabbit, according to the best authorities, but M.P. finds that pronunciation too perplexing to countenance.

And just to round things out on a cool autumn night, M.P. added some potatoes and onions to a velouté sauce to make a tasty pot of creamy goodness, which needed only the addition of some coarse-ground black pepper to be complete.

My contribution to the dinner was to warm up a couple of those 7- Up Biscuits I told you about, and of course to lay the silverware, light the candles, and decant the White Zin.

From the 12 o'clock position:  biscuit, fish, broccoli, rarebit, potatoes & onions.

For dessert, with our coffee we had the last of the Granny in a Blanket - apples baked in pastry - from last week, once again with French vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce:  the delightful coda to another lovely meal, and another quiet weekend.

We are most grateful that in a troubled world we are somehow blessed, Deo gratias, with a happy circle of light and peace and good cheer in our humble home together, and I wish the same for all my truckbuddies.

Toujours bon appétit!