Forty? Seventy? Aren't they basically the same?

Back home in California and happy to be here, yammering goats and very small mountain of work notwithstanding. 

But one last post about the New England sojourn:

Last week, Isabel and I drove up to Maine to visit my friend Mary who lives in an old farmhouse full of eclectic furniture, art, and textiles that shouldn’t work together but do: Oriental rugs, Marimekko tablecloths, midcentury modern dining room set, flea market paintings, relief maps, collections of plastic wildcats and old padlocks. I love her house. I mention the decor because I started thinking there’s a strong correlation between how a person puts together a house and how she (or he) cooks. 

None of the dishes Mary served us for dinner should have worked together, but it was a perfect meal. This is what she served: lobster bisque, lobster tacos, chicken tagine. No vegetable, no salad. You aren’t going to see this lineup in the “menu suggestions” of any cookbook and that's a problem with cookbooks. 

But the recipes? They came out of cookbooks and no complaints there.

-lobster bisque. You'll find this 1881 recipe on page 108 of The Essential New York Times Cookbook. I've never cooked lobster and probably never will as lobster = unthinkable luxury in California, but for people who live or vacation in coastal New England, the book is widely available in libraries. It's outstanding, so you should consider buying it and I'm starting to think my mother-in-law's beach house needs a copy. Of this lovely bisque, Amanda Hesser writes: "Everything about the soup is subtle. The lobster flavor is pure but discreet. The sweetness of the Sauternes echoes that of the shellfish, and save for a little zing of cayenne, all the flavors are elegant and restrained." Mary substituted 1% milk for the whole milk Hesser calls for and Okanagan ice wine for the Sauternes. If I could only eat one soup for the rest of my life, this would be it.  

-lobster tacos. This recipe from Mark Miller’s Tacos entails marinating lobster, avocado, and chunks of ripe mango in lime juice and olive oil. You then fold this into soft corn tortillas with some soft lettuce and finish with truffle oil. Mary used pineapple instead of mango and omitted the truffle oil and the tacos were my second favorite part of the meal. I loved them, but loved the bisque more. The recipe is here.

-chicken tagine. In one of Kate Christensen's novels, a 74-year-old woman seduces a 40-year-old man by serving him this chicken tagine, and Christensen includes the recipe in Blue Plate Special, her new memoir. Way to raise expectations! I took a few bites of the tagine and it was very good, but I was too full of lobster to give it my full attention. Isabel, however, loved it and ate thirds. Later, I asked, “Do you think the chicken was really good enough that a 70-year-old woman could use it to seduce a 40-year old man?” She stared at me with precisely the expression you'd expect on the face of a 16-year-old  when her mother asks such a ludicrous question. She said, “No? I don’t know.” And looked away, presumably so I’d shut up.  

If you're curious, the recipe is on Christensen's web site. 

After dinner, Mary said, “I didn’t even offer anyone dessert!” But that’s what made the dinner so great. Dessert would have been conventional and too much.