More pork please

I have rediscovered the joys of the pork tenderloin and made it for dinner again last night. This way was even easier than the last recipe. I simply drizzled a little olive oil on the tenderloins, sprinkled a little garlic salt, cracked pepper and a little Greek Seasoning.

Preheated the oven to 425, lined a cookie sheet with foil and roasted the tenderloins on the cookiesheet. I didn't even turn them this time. They took about 18 minutes and when they were cooked, I took them out of the oven , covered them in the foil they were cooked in and let them rest for a few minutes.

I boiled a few ears of corn, and made my families rice pilaf. I'm sure I've given the recipe, but here it is if I didn't.

1 tbs. olive oil
1/2 C. thin vermicelli noodles-broken, or chicken soup noodles
1 C. Uncle Ben's rice
2 C. chicken stock or water
kosher salt and pepper to taste
1 C. frozen peas

Heat the oil in a heavy bottom pot. Add the noodles, and stir until they become golden, about 2 minutes (they will burn quickly, so keep a close eye on them).

Add in the rice, and stir just to coat the grains with the olive oil.

Add in the stock or water to the pot, cover with a lid, and turn the heat down to medium low. Rice is ready when all water has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper and throw in the peas. Turn the heat off and recover the pot until ready to serve.

French onion soup for company

A journalist from the Westport Magazine is coming over tomorrow for an interview and lunch. The weather has begun to (finally!) cool and I thought soup and salad would be a nice meal.

French Onion soup is very easy and can (and should) be made a day before and reheated.

2 tbs. unsalted butter
3 onions
1 tbs. dried thyme
pinch of kosher salt and pepper
2 boxes beef broth
baguette
gruyere cheese

Melt butter in a large soup pot. While the butter melts, thinly slice the onions and add to the pot. Stir until combined and add thyme. Let cook for a few minutes. Add broth, salt and pepper and let boil for 10 minutes. Lower heat and cover for 30 minutes. Toast a few slices of french bread and grate the gruyere cheese.

About 5 minutes before serving, preheat oven to broil. Ladle soup into an oven proof soup bowl. Add 1 slice of toasted baguette and a sprinkling of shredded gruyere cheese. Broil for a few minutes until top of cheese is bubbly and melted.

I am going to serve this with some greens that we bought today at a farm where we pick our pumpkins every year. Since it has stayed so warm here there were lots of vegetables still available. I am going to make a salad with lettuce, orange peppers, cucumber, sliced apple, and toasted almond slivers.

I made an easy honey mustard vinaigrette by mixing equal parts of dijon mustard and honey ( about 2 tbs. each). Add in the juice from 1/2 lemon, a pinch of salt and pepper and olive oil (about 1/4 cup). Whisk together and taste.

The joys of pork tenderloin

I made a delicious and VERY easy pork tenderloin last night. I hadn't made a tenderloin in quite sometime and had forgotten how easy and delicious they are.

I set the oven to broil and put the rack in the top 1/3 of the oven. I lined a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and placed the 2 tenderloins on the cookie sheet.

I rubbed the tenderloins with some (maybe 2 tbs.) of dijon mustard, some garlic paste, and a little apricot jam ( it was only about 1 tbs. as that was all we had left). I sprinkled a little kosher salt and pepper on the tenderloins and popped them in the oven. They cooked for about 7 minutes, then I turned them once and let them finish cooking. I took the tenderloins out of the oven and wrapped them in the foil they cooked on to rest. This also helped them stay juicy and tender. Pork tenderloins have a tendency to dry out if left to cook for too long.

I made the dilled german potato salad that I did on TV a while ago, it has no mayo.

If you want the recipe, let me know and I'll add it to the blog.

Off to work tonight to do menu V from the 15 Minute Meals series.

Fooding in the city

We spent the weekend in NY and what fun it was. Sunday morning, we ate at a little cafe and took the kids down to Chinatown where they bought little Chinese dresses and we wandered in and out of various stores. I showed them all sorts of interesting new foods, dried fish stomachs, many types of dried herbs, dried shark fins too! I thought it was interesting, they thought the stores smelled, "funny".

I then took my younger (more adventurous) daughter to Kalustyans on 29th and Lexington. It's an amazing spice store filled with fantastic Middle Eastern foods. I bought some lentils for dal, Israeli and Lebanese couscous, some interesting Indian curry sauces, a Tunisian mixed spice, Yellow mustard seeds, apricot and mango candies and a few other assorted goodies.

We returned from the city and had an impromptu dinner with our friends from up the street.

I had made some roasted curried cauliflower which I reheated in a pan with a little oil and a tbs. of mustard seeds.

I made a dal from the lentils which was pretty easy.

Rinse the lentils in a bowl. Add enough water to cover the lentils and microwave for 3 minutes. Boil the lentils in a pot for 20-25 minutes until the lentils are soft. Drain from the water. In a pan, add a little vegetable oil, some mustard seeds and cumin powder. Stir until the mustard seeds begin to pop. You should also add Coriander seeds, but I didn't have any.

Add a thinly sliced onion and stir to coat the onion with the spices. Add the lentils and stir to combine. Add a can of diced tomatoes, salt and a tiny amount ( a pinch) of Garam Masala. Add the juice from 1/2 lime and serve. It was so delicious.

Oh yes, I bought some saffron rice which didn't really taste like saffron, but was a bright yellow. We ate the dal with the rice and the curried cauliflower. My friend made some Indian style cabbage was was delicious too.

P.S. Kalustyan's has a great website where you can order all of these things: http://www.kalustyans.com/

Momference

I just gave a 1 hour talk for the Momference on how to make Time to Eat! It was a global telesummit geared towards moms. I talked about how to stock your pantry, and gave some recipes from the book.

I also wanted to give you the chicken recipe that I made a couple of days ago as well as a roasted curried cauliflower.

Chicken with rosemary, pine nuts and golden raisins:

1 tbs. unsalted butter
2 tbs. olive oil
5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
3 tsp. chopped rosemary
1 C. toasted pinenuts
1 C. golden raisins
1 C. white wine
salt and pepper

Heat a large nonstick pan on medium high. Add olive oil and butter. When the butter has melted, add chicken and cook for 3 minutes per side. Add rosemary, pinenuts and raisins. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper and add white wine. Cover and turn heat down to medium. Cook for 15 minutes or until most of the wine has evaporated.

Roasted curried cauliflower

1 head washed cauliflower, cut into small florets
2 tsp. olive oil
1 tbs. curry powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 500. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. In a large bowl, toss all ingredients together and place on the cookie sheet. Bake for 6 minutes and shake the pan to move the cauliflower around. Cook for an additional 6-8 minutes until cauliflower is golden brown. Serve warm or eat cold.

The chicken with the cauliflower side dish was excellent and quite good as a leftover as well.

Leftovers

Tonight was leftover pork chops and couscous. I had cooked peas and the girls had frozen peas and some cucumber.

I am looking forward to tomorrow night's dinner. I have an idea of how I'm going to make the dish, as I had it at a friends house. It's chicken with golden raisins, pine nuts and rosemary. I'm going to use white wine and some chicken stock to cook down the raisins.

I'll post the recipe tomorrow night.

frozen grapes

I just can't get enough of them! I have been eating them once a day for over a week. I think about them in the morning and hope they will be frozen by evening.

But seriously, my daughters think I'm nuts, yet they prefer frozen peas. Go figure!!

Ok, dinner tonight- we had 2 other little girls for dinner, and I was using up the leftovers from Saturday's party.

Here's what I reheated:
trio of roasted potatoes
eggplant rolotini (if you've never had this, it's basically breaded thin slices of eggplant, then sautee and chop spinach, make a ricotta filling with ricotta, smoked mozzarella, a couple eggs, a handful of Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a little garlic. Place a tablespoon of spinach and a spoonful of the ricotta filling at the wide end of the breaded eggplant, roll, cover with tomato sauce and bake at 450 for 10-12 minutes until warm and oozy. YUM

I made more of the Israeli couscous, quinoa mix that I found at Trader Joe's last week, and Panko crusted pork chops which the girls had 3rd's of!!!

It was a bit of a mish mash, but everyone found something they liked and everyone was happy.