Dinner! 2010

[Teddy Devico]

Grilled Pork Loin with Pork Reduction, Sauteed Swish Chard Leaf, Pickled Swish Chard Stem, and Grapes

I started off by breaking down the pork tenderloin. I removed all of the silver skin while trying to keep some fat on the pork. The silver skin does not break down when cooking so it needs to be removed. A lot of recipes say to trim the fat off meats. I have to disagree about this because the fat imparts such a great flavor and moistness. After the pork was trimmed I portioned the loin into four 4 oz pieces. The pork got seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper, chili, cinnamon, thyme, and rosemary. I let the pork "marinade" for about 3 hours.

(The other 4 oz portion of pork was seasoned without salt for my dad so it is not in this picture)

For the sauce I started to render the fat out of 6 strips of bacon and the pork trimmings from the loin. Once most of the fat was rendered I added thinly slice red onion and cooked for about 15 minutes. Next I added apples and cooked for another 15 minutes. Then I added a bottle of beer, thyme, rosemary, chili, trimmings from the swish chard stem, and cinnamon and simmered for 45 minutes. Once all of the flavor was soaked out of the vegetables I strained the sauce. I reduced this strained sauce and reduced it until it looked like a caramel. Right before serving I mixed in a little nob of butter.

I removed the leaves from the swish chard stem (I am very fast at this because I have to do clean boxes of Swish Card when I go to Uproot). I cleaned both the stems and leafs in cold water to remove the sand and grit. I then trimmed off the stems and cut them into uniform sizes. I heated water with lemon, salt, and sugar and poured it over the swish chard stem to do a quick pickle. I let the stems rest in the liquid for about an hour. I blanched the leafs in salty water (Thomas Keller goes into a great explanation of how to properly blanch greens in his book The French Laundry Cookbook) and then shocked them in ice cold salty water. Meanwhile I sauteed diced onions and garlic with a little butter until slightly caramelized. I drained off the liquid from the swish chard and squeezed out the excess liquid. Then I chopped the swish chard up into bite sized pieces and added it to the garlic and onion. I then cooked till it was tender and added some lemon juice and zest.

I started to peel grapes and slice them in half revealing a white inside. I then sliced unpeeled grapes and the insides were purplish. I was shocked. It obviously has to do with the skin and maybe light, but I am not sure.. Do any of you?

I grilled the pork chops on a hot grill on all 6 sides until it was golden brown and about 150 degrees. I then let the pork rest so the juices would all redistribute and it would keep the pork moist.

I put the greens down in the middle of the plate and added the loin of pork on top of them. I ladled the sauce on top of the pork and in front of the pork. On top of the sauce went the stems and grapes.

The dish tasted great. The pork was very moist and flavorful. I enjoyed the savory flavor of cinnamon, which is very under used. There was a great balance of salt and sweet overall throughout the dish. Also, the lemon made the beet stems taste outstanding. I still am very curious about why the peeled grapes look different than the unpeeled grapes.

[ChrisTaylor]

Dish #10 from Larousse: tajine of lamb and broad beans.

[C. sapidus]

Teddy, that’s beautiful, and I bet it tasted fabulous!

Our dinner: two thick strip steaks marinated with soy sauce and black pepper, and then grilled over charcoal. One rested in a 190F oven to be shared by the boys. The other was sliced, briefly simmered with lime juice and fish sauce, and then tossed with mint, cilantro, scallions, cayenne, sesame seeds, and roasted rice powder.

Served with jasmine rice, iceberg lettuce wedges, sliced cucumbers, and sliced tomatoes.

[robirdstx]

Black Pepper Crusted Pork Tenderloin with Black Cherry Sauce and Sauteed Kale and Cannellini Beans

[ChrisTaylor]

That pork looks good.

Tonight I'm on recipe 11, 12 and 13 from Larousse: saute chicken Stanley (essentially chicken with a creamy mushroom and onion sauce laced with curry powder and chilli powder), glazed carrots and sauteed potatoes.

[Kim Shook]

Bruce – that looks and sounds absolutely fantastic! I’m going to print out your directions and see if I can’t make something approaching that!

Dinner tonight was a pantry slow cooker pot roast – a little 2 1/2 lb. rump roast from the freezer (still trying to clean that out before I really get going on my Christmas cooking) with a sauce of Lipton onion soup mix, Bisto, onions, garlic and Worcestershire pepper. A really trashy version. It was good, though, after 9 hours in the slow cooker. Served with potatoes (cooked with the roast) and broccoli:

Today, I did sweet potatoes for our Christmas eve party and for my MIL’s Thanksgiving dinner and my Christmas cranberry sauce.

[dcarch]

Wow, everyone is showing off with fantastic meat dishes. Great plating as well as yummy looking.

I made a very quick and simple meat dish also. Pepper tenderloin steak.

dcarch

[Le Master]

Yeah, so who else just got a really bad case of this after the past several posts?

Edited November 15, 2010 by Le Master (log)

[David Ross]

Tonight, a delicious and tender veal loin that I ordered from D'artagnan. I wrapped the loin in bacon, then seared it to crisp the bacon and then roasted in a 375 oven for 18 minutes to a temperature of 127. I was skeptical of the temperature, thinking the veal would be way too rare, but I took a cue from a recipe from Nancy Oakes of Boulevard restaurant in San Francisco and it paid off. The veal was incredibly tender and juicy, the bacon crisp and salty.

I served the veal on a bed of garlic spinach and a red wine sauce, (also based on a recipe from the Boulevard Cookbook by Nancy Oakes).

The main accompaniment was a chanterelle risotto using mushrooms picked from the forests not far from my home. (The chanterelle season in the Northwest has been very good this year). I added a mix of fresh marjoram, lemon thyme and parsley to the risotto. I must admit, one of the best dishes of the year. Enjoy.

[ChrisTaylor]

You're an artist, David. That veal is a work of art.

[Blether]

Still in salmon season here - since the fishcakes I posted in breakfast, there's been salmon & veggies au gratin, and a salmon version of the Scottish soup Cullen Skink, with the fish blended into a milk base.

I scored another side, skinned it, put some in the freezer, a piece in the fridge and cut up one serving into 3/8" pieces.

For tonight's dinner, after mise en place I softened two anchovy fillets in 1/2oz of butter in a frypan, mashing them up with a wooden spoon as I went. I got the pasta into the boiling water, added some sliced leek to the butter/anchovy, stirred it round, seasoned with black pepper, lay on the chopped salmon to steam there and covered the pan with a lid.

In the meantime I grated about 1/2oz of parmesan and beat it into an egg (discarding some of the thinner white) with a good grinding of black pepper. I tossed this with the pasta, carbonara-style, and then tossed in the contents of the frypan and a firm squeeze of lemon juice - in this time the salmon was just right, cooked but juicy. Fettucine with salmon, carbonara-style:

Edited November 15, 2010 by Blether (log)

[ScottyBoy]

Some fresh ground short rib burgers and caramelized red wine onions.

[Dakki]

Early Thanksgiving dinner.

[Pierogi]

Some fresh ground short rib burgers and caramelized red wine onions.

Oh. God.

Oh. My. God.

[ChrisTaylor]

It is God, isn't it?

[suzilightning]

oh, yes...yess...YESSSSSSSSS

last night after all the stuff i gave him john wanted some eggs with ham on bread so that is what he finished the night with.

today sent him in with some toasted raisin bread to start, leftover turkey, stuffing, and beans with cranberry sauce and then some buffalo sliders and chips.

there is a bacon covered meatloaf in the oven along with roasted sweet potatoes. i have some spinach leftover that i am going to "cream" to go with the meat and potatoes.

made some portugese sweet bread for john's luncheon that has been changed to thursday. getting ready to make 3 sets of bread next weekend for the holiday. then it is time to make clam chowda for the night before thanksgiving as per my family tradition - manhattan, not new england.

[Blether]

The first of the winter's spear squid / yari-ika:

I bought these as part of a big shop last Friday, and put them straight into the freezer. They thawed on Monday and Tuesday in the fridge, but then I was too busy on Wednesday to prep them, and my plans for them had to change. I didn't want to serve them raw any more. I did make the stock I'd planned, from legs, heads and innards, and I adapted what I'd envisaged as squid tartare into squid stew.

I marinaded the squid meat - sliced without originality into rings - overnight in salt, knife-minced garlic, mild pepper and chilli pepper, and the grated zest and juice of an unripe natsumikan from the building's tree.

I took the strained stock from the fridge, reduced it to thicken a little, then added all the meat and marinade and brought just back to a boil to cook it through. The ink, I added by scissoring the ink sacs (visible on the cutting board in the photo above) in a small tea strainer, then dipping this into the stew in the pan and stirring with chopsticks to push the ink out.

Exhilarating

Edited November 19, 2010 by Blether (log)

[dcarch]

"Wonderful cooking by everyone" is such an understatment! And the diversity is amazing!

I just want everyonhe to know that many of the decorative holiday squashes are delicious. Don't throw them away.

Mini-pumpkins with baked scallops and shrimps. Black garlic sauce.

dcarch

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[kayb]

dcarch -- pumpkin with scallops. Who'd'a thunk it? Fascinating idea. What's the spice?

RobirdsTX -- that black cherry sauce is calling to me. Would you be so kind as to share a recipe?

[robirdstx]

RobirdsTX -- that black cherry sauce is calling to me. Would you be so kind as to share a recipe?

Hi kayb. Here's the recipe I used. I usually make a sauce using apricot preserves or orange marmalade when we have pork tenderloin but was out of both and just happened to have the black cherry preserves in the pantry. We really enjoyed this sauce - so much so that we had it twice that week. I did make one change to the sauce recipe - I used pork stock instead of chicken stock.

[kayb]

Thanks, RobirdsTX! Duly copied and pasted into my ever-growing file. Will scout for black cherry preserves next time I'm out and about.

[ScottyBoy]

dcarch -- pumpkin with scallops. Who'd'a thunk it? Fascinating idea.

Oh yes, I'm doing a pumpkin risotto with scallops for a dinner tomorrow. The sweet pumpkin, creamy risotto, crunchy snap peas folded in and a nice sherry gastrique to cut through it all.

[dcarch]

dcarch -- pumpkin with scallops. Who'd'a thunk it? Fascinating idea. What's the spice?

----------

Thanks kayb. That's black garlic sauce.

dcarch

[Le Master]

That's black garlic sauce.

What ingredients are in that sauce? Is there a taste to which it is akin?

Edited November 21, 2010 by Le Master (log)

[dcarch]

That's black garlic sauce.

What ingredients are in that sauce? Is there a taste to which it is akin?

I assume you know what is black garlic (aged garlic). I use EVOO, balsamic, a little red wine, a little soy sauce and a lot of black garlic, all pureed into a thick sauce.

The taste is very interestingly sweet, It's not like anything I can compare it with. Black garlic does not taste like garlic at all.

dcarch