Tuesday Dinner: Pork Tenderloin Medallions with Mushroom-Shallot Sauce

Sometimes I buy things for dinner and don’t cook them. For instance, I picked up a pork tenderloin about a week ago. I’m not 100 percent sure what I was going to do with it but I’m crafty and figured I would come up with something. A combination of things got in the way and I ended up not cooking the pork, which meant that the vacuum-packed pork sword remained in the fridge taking up some space. I think it also began to irritate The Wife. On Saturday, I asked The Wife what she wanted for dinner. She asked if I was going to make the pork sword. On Sunday, I asked the question again and received the same answer.

Finally, I stopped asking because I knew I was going to cook it but didn’t want to incur the silent wrath of The Wife, who doubles as our household C.F.O. and likely saw the pork sword as an investment of $5 that may go bad. I can appreciate that. So, I finally broke down and made it.

Wednesday Dinner: Pasta With Mushrooms, Brussels Sprouts, and Parmesan

If I were to look back at my childhood and make a list of the reasons why I was overweight, the regular consumption of pasta would be in the top five. I make pasta once a week here at Al Dente HQ. Macaroni, frozen or boxed, was the basis of at least two meals a week as a kid, and may have been found in soups or other dishes that popped up during the same seven-day span.

I have cut pasta out of my diet totally in the past (namely during The Weight Loss Story), but it makes it very tough to feed The Wife and me. Plus, I like pasta.

Meatless Monday: Angel Hair with Shallots and Broccoli

Technically, this recipe is called “Angel Hair Pasta with Shallots, Garlic, Broccoli & Lemon,” but I really can’t stand unnecessarily long titles. The author’s original title listed half of the ingredients, which seems excessive until you consider that all of the items in the title lend a distinct flavor or characteristic to the final product.

The shallot and garlic complement one another, adding a subtle sharpness and the solid foundation. The lemon brings an acidic profile to offset the fat within the olive oil. And the broccoli, well, the broccoli brings everything else: nutrients, flavor, sustenance, texture, color, etc.

All things considered, this recipe was fine though I’m more partial to the previous pasta and broccoli recipes I have published here.

Christmas 2013: Shallot and Red Wine Sauce

So, here’s the thing with my Christmas roast: it didn’t produce enough drippings to construct a gravy. All it really did was make a bunch of grease to burn on to the pan.

I was confident that roast would be moist, rendering a gravy or sauce unnecessary. But, people like something that they can ladle over roast beef. It’s habit and who am I to interrupt such a practice? Not wanting a traditional thick beef gravy and with a bunch of shallots in the house, I thought I would look for something else. Enter Gordon Ramsay’s shallot and red wine sauce.

Shallot and Red Wine Sauce
By Gordon Ramsay via BBC GoodFood (adapted and measures converted from metric)

• 8 oz. shallots, sliced
• 4 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, lightly crushed
• sprig rosemary
• 5 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 13 oz. red wine
• 13 oz. beef stock or brown chicken stock, preferably homemade
• 1 tbsp. butter

Heat oil in a medium saucepan until it shimmers. Add the shallots and cook until lightly browned and soft, 3 minutes. Season with ground black pepper and add the garlic and rosemary. Cook 3 more minutes, stirring to prevent the shallots from burning.

Add the vinegar and cook until it has a syrup consistency. Add the wine and reduce by two-thirds.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced by two-thirds. Remove the garlic and rosemary, add a pinch of salt to taste and whisk in the butter.

Thursday Dinner: Lemon Chicken and Rice With Kale

This will be a very short post. Time is a premium right now, what with the year wrapping up at work and the holidays creeping slowly towards reality. It’s a shame, really, because this dish was really good.

Serious Eats writer Yasmin Fahr does a tremendous job of matching flavors here, with shallot, saffron and cumin all intertwining with the lemon and kale. The beauty is well…

WHAT WORKED: The cooking process. One pot, quick and easy. Cook the chicken, set aside, brown the shallots, toss everything in the pan and walk away for 20 minutes. Does it get better than that?

WHAT DIDN’T: I didn’t cut my kale into ribbons, instead opting for the big bag o’ kale from Wegmans. I’m very lazy when it comes to such things.

Saturday dinner: Garides me anitho

So smitten were we here at Al Dente with the garides me anitho at Zaytinya that we decided to give it a go. But how were we supposed to replicate a restaurant recipe. It turns out that the answer was as simple as Google.

In two cases, the recipe had been deconstructed by Washington, D.C. area publications. Metro Weekly posted a video on March 21, 2013 featuring executive chef Michael Costa’s step-by-step preparation of the shrimp-and-dill dish. Three years ago, Washingtonian magazine featured a piece on the Penn Quarter restaurant’s chef de cuisine, who presented the recipe. In both, garides me anitho is described as one of the restaurants most ordered plates.

Eat The Freezer/Meatless Monday: Kale and white bean stew

NOTE: Remember when The Cosby Show or The Golden Girls would run a clip show? Welcome to my version of a clip show. Eat The Freezer is where we work through the frozen leftovers in my basement freezer.

NOTE II: The quart in the freezer was a little low on liquid, so I added a can of vegetable broth to bulk it up.

This is getting annoying.

For the second straight meal, I’ve made a stew that didn’t thicken. (Side note: I know, for all of the things I could complain about and things that could be wrong, I’m complaining about a stew that will not thicken.) Saturday’s chicken and biscuits came out soupy, as did tonight’s.

Now, I didn’t mind that this came out more like greens and beans and less like a bean stew. I guess I was just a little disappointed, again, in Bon Appetit for tossing out another recipe that came up just a little short.

WHAT WORKED: The ingredients themselves made for a nice combination and a hearty soup.

WHAT DIDN’T: It needed salt. Desperately.

WHAT DID THE WIFE SAY: “It’s missing something. I’m not sure what it is, but it needs something.” SALT! It’s missing salt, woman!

WILL IT MAKE ANOTHER APPEARANCE: It certainly will, thanks to the leftover quart in my freezer.

Saturday dinner: Veal stew forestière

I thought it was funny that The Kid woke up at 5:45 a.m. on Saturday. She usually makes it until 6:30 or 7 on the weekends. I found it funnier when I got home from my Starbucks run that it felt about as warm in my kitchen as it did in my driveway.

“Hey,” The Wife bellowed from our living room. “Is the vent in the kitchen blowing cold air?”

It was.

Thus, a serious of dominoes fell. I called the furnace repair company, The Wife took The Kid to The In-Laws’ house. I sat/napped in the cold until The Furnace Guy came and fixed the issue (apparently, I need a new inductor). We laid out $210 for a service call, labor and $3 worth of “inductor lube” (The Furnace Guy’s words, not mine). The Wife and The Kid came back, after extending a dinner invitation to The In-Laws. I went to Wegmans.

Had it just been The Wife and me, I was going to make duck, fulfilling one of my New Year’s Resolutions/Things I Want To Do in 2013 list. With an additional three people for dinner (The Wife’s aunt Barbara usually joins after the trio attend Saturday evening mass.), I scratched the bird and went for something we have not had here in a while: veal.