Wow! I'm really amazed by how many of you are reading this! Thanks so much for your time, I'll do my best to keep y'all updated as regularly as possible!
Keeping up with our theme of things that make us very happy and chubby, today we're talking about meals that impress your parents. Everyone wants to prove to their parents that they're not total schlubs. Especially when your parents have fed you as well as mine have over the years. My Mom is a kitchen Goddess and I can only hope to possess half of the ability she does, so no pressure or anything.
So my Mom came to visit a couple of weeks ago, and what with our fancy new kitchen and all, Matt, Butters and I really wanted to cook something with a little extra oomph. Well, Matt wanted to make a big pie and ice cream that tastes like whiskey, which had alot of extra oomph.
On our menu (which I thought about all week...), was Balsamic Galzed Pork Tenderloin, Baked Brie with Roasted Garlic, Pan Roasted Carrots, and Homemade Pesto over Farfalle. Matt will coorespond later with his whiskey ice cream recipe.
For the pork, start with about a 3 lb tenderloin. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Mix together 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, 3 tablespoons whole seedy dijon mustard, 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons orange marmalade, a tsp of basil, and 2 tsp each salt and cracked black pepper. Turn a pan on medium high heat to sear off the pork on all sides in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. DRY YOUR MEAT OFF FIRST! Remember? I thought so. Once your meat is brown on all sides, use tongs to place it in an adequately sized baking dish. Pour glaze over meat, and throw it into the oven. It should be 150 degrees of awesome in about a half an hour. What you DON'T do, is think you have awesome Michael Symon endorsed AllClad cookware (which I do, coincidentally...), and throw the whole pan in the oven like the commercial says on television. If you DO do this, don't forget about the metal handle, which will be freaking HOT, and will blister your hand if you try to take it out of the oven without a mit after 2 glasses of wine. Not that I did that exact thing, just I can imagine that it would be painful, and could potentially make you look like a schlub.
For the pesto, combine 3 cups basil leaves (which seems like alot, but they'll all pulvarize themselves into a little pile soon enough), a handful of your choice of nut (traditionally it would be pine nuts, but if you haven't been to the store lately you'll have to trade your left nostril to buy them, so I like cashews), a tablespoon of lemon juice, 5 anchovie fillets, 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese, a tablespoon of black pepper, and about 1/2 cup olive oil in a food processor. Blend until smooth, and pour over 1 lb farfalle pasta.
For the carrots, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil on medium high in a frying pan. Cut 3 large carrots on the bias into 1/4 inch slices. Sautee the carrots with salt and pepper to taste until slightly carmelized by their own sugars. The littlest slices should be pretty brown, but that's what makes them taste like something.
I made the baked brie for an appetizer with crostini. Just blast the crap out of the brie on 400 in the oven with some cloves of garlic and olive oil drizzled on top in a covered baking dish. Spread it on any crusty bread or your favorite cracker.
And that my friends is how you make an anti-schlub, Mom impressing meal! Now bandage up your burny hands and get out there into the real world and fire up your ovens! You're a big kid now!
No comments:
Post a Comment