My wife and I have recently been exploring the virtues of the cheaper animals, and pork loin has been a big hit.
That’s a honey dijon rosemary thyme marinade, 1/6 cup of honey, dijon mustard, and soy sauce with 1 tsp of rosemary, thyme, and garlic powder. Left it for 24 hours, roasted until done. Turned out really well—my wife usually doesn’t like pork, but she’s a fan of this recipe.
That sounds absolutely glorious, @Fishbreath. I am always leery of pork loin; afraid of overcooking it. I’ve kinda gotten used to chicken breast, but mastering a new lean meat is kinda intimidating!
Provided a Venezuelan Feast for friends tonight before we watched Pacific Rim together (the good one). Two of my favorite people in the world, a ludicrously awesome movie, and good-to-great food? Yeah, that’s a night to be happy about :)
On top of the stuff described above, I tossed in some Reina Pepiada, which is sort of a Venezuelan chicken salad, where you make a dressing of mayonnaise, vinegar, lime juice, and mashed avocado, then mix in chicken breast, onions, tomatoes, chilies, cilantro, parsley, etc. It’s super tasty!
I had never had a recipe with dijon mustard as a rub base until I tried one last year making baked ham. Holy cow was it good. I’m betting yours was fantastic. Dijon was the key and you never expected it to be. Since then I’ve tried a few other recipes using it as the base for a glaze or rub and it has proved very well in that task.
I’ve not watched Pacific Rim, which one is solid? And that meal looks great to me too. I should eat breakfast before reading this thread.
The first one, by far. Definitely worth your time if the idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters at all interests you!
I get that. Growing up, I thought I only liked the bacon part of the pig for just that reason. Lately, I’ve abandoned trying to time it. Now I just stick a meat thermometer in and trust that.
I do pork loins a decent amount. They’re one of the better values, especially since it tends to be one of the better cuts. Also do whole hams a few times a year.
Thatbsaid your glaze is a bit different than the ones I’ve done, and I like the sound of it a lot. Might have to pick one of the loins on sale right now and try it.
The quantities I gave were for a 2.5lb chunk, which is about all we make at once for just the two of us. If you make it, I hope you enjoy it!
We combine dijon mustard with old style (whole seeds) mustard, and then spread it over salmon filets/steaks, then topped with a sprinkle of brown sugar before baking. So simple, so good. As a bonus, the kids love it, which is great for their appreciation of real mustard, not the bright yellow radioactive one. :P
Today’s meal was a fun, and extremely delicious, endeavor.
Country style ribs with homemade bbq, four cheese risotto, and creamy Parmesan Brussels sprouts with bacon (or, as the case is, leftover bits from a home baked glazed ham)
I’ve made sprouts before, usually baked in a balsamic glaze, and like them. But these were just so good. Amazing flavor.
Fairly unhealthy with the butter, ham, and cream sauce though.
But sooo good you guys
Bah. Live large and fuck the calorie count.
Man, I need to suggest parmesan and cream to one of my Sunday night dinner group, who has brussels sprouts on the brain but usually stops at roasting them.
I built a gumbo this evening. First time I’ve tried this concoction. Mainly it was to use up a bunch of leftover shrimp.
In process: the onions, peppers, and celery are cooking in the roux, with other stuff waiting to go in:
I was kind of surprised at how straightforward the recipe was. Comments suggest it has a number of unorthodoxies—diced tomatoes, white wine, no filé—but not being any kind of purist, I wasn’t too fussed.
Ladled up with some rice:
Fun dish! The roux needs constant attention while it’s cooking, but apart from that (and a crapton of chopping) the whole operation was pretty uncomplicated. My only reservation is that the shrimp will unavoidably get rubbery in the leftovers, but c’est la vie.
Alton Brown recommends making a roux in a low oven, which eliminates the need for constant minding (see also: caramelizing onions). I havent tried it though because I very rarely actually need a dark roux.
That looks lovely. I’ve tried gumbo a few time and found it a pain in the butt making the roux. So last time, I made gumbo without a roux. Lots of okra and file powder at the end thickened it up very nicely. I’m making it without roux from now on.
Thanks—it was tasty, and I’m looking forward to finding out what an extra day has done to the leftovers.
I’ve done roux before, but never one this dark, and it really wants to turn. Thanks for Alton Brown’s oven trick, Wheeljack :)
Still undecided on the okra. It definitely adds a certain something, but maybe less next time.
Made some parmesan crusted chicken cutlets; a white and wild rice pilaf with garlic, green onion, carrots, thyme, chicken stock, and parsley; and a spinach salad with apples, cranberries, pecans, feta, and a maple-cider vinaigrette. Tasty dinner!
Something really cool happened tonight. I was having kind of a crappy day, and a friend showed up with a gift. Totally out of the blue. She’s a gamer friend of mine named Sharon, and she comes over for our game nights and generally kicks our asses at games, in the nicest possible way. She’s such a cool person, and super smart. She’s the kind of person who helps a person like me figure out what to do when he’s learning a game, in a gentle and discreet way, but still has no compunction about blocking a vital resource that she’s already figured out I’m going to try to get on my last turn so she can get extra victory points.
She’s just really great and we love having her as part of our group.
At any rate, she showed up tonight to play a couple of games with my roommate and she had this box in her hands:
She said, “This is for Christien. Because he cooks.”
She went on to say that this is made by a company (Penzeys) that wears its heart and politics on its sleeve and she wanted to support that by buying some of these boxes of theirs for her cooking friends, and I made the list. Probably because I always send her a Star Wars postcard when the new movie is coming out. But that’s a story for a different thread, and I won’t go into the actual politics here because this isn’t P&R.
Anyway, it was such a nice gesture. Just a friend who knows you love something, and gets you a gift out of the blue because she knows you love it (and because you’ve fed her before).
I opened the box and wow, the aromas were amazing. Just freaking beautiful. I’m usually pretty careful about prefab spice mixes because they seem to always be mostly salt, but there’s a bunch here I’m excited to mess around with.
Also, there are game cards!
Anyway, this isn’t something I’ve cooked. Yet. It’s just a share with a bunch of people who I think will appreciate the gesture.
Sometimes people are really, really good to you. For no reason at all.
-xtien
That’s basically why they make those boxes.
(I hope it doesn’t spoil the gesture if I note that they had a special where they were giving those away completely free a little while ago - apparently it was so popular they ran out of that size of jar and had to give out rain checks, and they had record levels of sales on other stuff as well. Because you can’t go to a Penzey’s store without wanting to buy something, in my experience. It’s like a candy store for cooks.)
No. Not at all. If she’d received these as swag and brought them to me it would mean a lot too. I just love when people pay attention like that.
-xtien
Awesome! Ours is showing up tomorrow.
Dude, that’s practically healthy!
Rice pilaf is great stuff, and so versatile. I don’t often think of it in time to get the right combination of ingredients together, but am always happier when I do.
