After a week of eating nearly every meal out, or at least very, very prepared, I was so excited to go grocery shopping last night! Joy! Divine! Pork tenderloin!!
Unlike my husband who would have come up with a plan for every meal and bought the ingredients for such meals, I perused the sales and purchased things that I figured I could make into a meal. Hence the following:
Discover that pork tenderloin is on sale for $1.99 a pound. Remember that we ate such a meal with friends a few weeks ago and it was really. really. really good. Buy two. Freeze one. Ignore the fact that you've never cooked one. Figure, it's meat -- how hard can it be?
Search for a recipe online. Don't write anything down. Vaguely remember words like: sear, apple vinegar, salt, apples, roast.
Consult pantry.
Realize it would be helpful to have a side dish. What goes with pork? Remember words like: apple. See things like potatoes. Start cooking.
Pour olive oil in skillet. Add kosher salt. And some pepper. And some vinegar. Wonder if you're making a salad dressing.
Heat. Hope that the tenderloin will fit on skillet that you usually use for pancakes. Figure you can cut it if it doesn't.
Wonder, when looking at the package, why this one is more than three pounds when almost every recipe calls for:
Tenderloin, 1-1.5 pounds. Figure you'll have to cook longer.
Open package. Realize that tenderloins are sold two-per package. Oh.
Sear meat.
Peel carrots that you discover in fridge of unknown freshness. Lay them in the roasting pan to form a rack. Pour in vinegar, a little oil. Chop garlic to add. Discover shallot. Add sliced shallot to roasting pan.
Place tenderloin on carrot rack, put in 400 degree oven. Think that you have too much vinegar. Go about business of peeling potatoes to cook in the salt and pepper searing mixture. Do the same with an apple. Fry. See the bacon in the fridge -- think, "I like bacon and potatoes and apples." Give it a whirl.
Serve tenderloin in slices with the potato-apple-bacon concoction with some warmed dates because even though you love-love-love dates, you're not sure how you're going to finish the 3-pound container of them that you bought at your favorite warehouse store. Even though you're nearly half way there. (I would have done this differently -- maybe put the apples over the meat in the oven as I think the recipe originally suggested.) Add some of the pepper bread from TJ's that you bought earlier to the plates.
Pour the wine.
Enjoy.
7 comments:
wow. sounds fun. i'm much more the recipe type myself.
was it tasty??
Hey, you sound like you plan like I do: just make sure you have lots of stuff in the cupboard, you'll never know when you'll need it. And I'll decide to start supper around 6:10 pm. Hmmmm
The first two times I did the pork tenderloin, it came marinated in the package. I put it on the grill and it was easy (easier than hamburgers!) and tasted wonderful.
Yes, it was yummy -- and we have leftovers for tomorrow's lunch!
Our friends had cooked it on the grill, but the weather wasn't grill worthy tonight.
I think good cooks are the ones who can do what you did - make it up as they go. I follow recipes. I never waver.
I wish I could embrace such wonderful cooking.
Glad it turned out well!
Let me guess: an NP on the Myers-Briggs?
You cook like I do. You must be great!
I love just wondering tr=through the grocery store picking up random things and making dinner
yep, I am like you -- congenitally unable to follow a recipe -- but really, why should we? And here's the word for it: improvisational cook. Doesn't that sound legitimate?
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