Casual Dinners
One of my un-New Year's resolutions is to come home early enough to have dinner once or twice a week. Most people assume that I come home and cook dinner every night, but in truth I get home so late, and I don't eat much anyway, that I usually don't bother (lunch is usually sufficient for my eating needs).
But this means I don't get to spend time with Melissa. It means I only get to cook for dinner parties, all at once in a big burst of culinary activity. I don't get to play with ideas. I get frustrated by all this, hence the decision to change.
Here's a quick rundown on some of the food I've cooked at home in the last couple weeks.
After the dinner with Melissa's shop mates, I had some pork loin left over (at least that's my memory of the cut that would be nestled up against the rib roast; my knowledge of meat cuts is pretty bad). This is a nice cylinder of meat, perfect for cutting into medallions. I pan-fried the medallions in a hot pan, and then laid them on a bed of spinach and rice. For the sauce, I juiced a bunch of oranges (we were still working through the glut of oranges from my dad), which I then strained through a fine-mesh strainer. I used the strained juice to deglaze the pan where I had fried the pork medallions and let it reduce until it was just a thin film covering the pan. Normally when correcting a sauce one starts with salt, but in this case I had to start with sugar; the acidity of the orange juice was overwhelming.
Not only was the dinner good, I got it together in something like 40 minutes (Melissa had washed the spinach in advance, which helped), including all the prep time.
Later that week, Melissa and I tried out a top round steak from Prather Ranch. We were very excited to discover this vendor in the Ferry Building. Prather Ranch beef is all organic, grass-fed, and from a closed herd since the 60's. Even better, they dry age their meat for 30 days. No one does this anymore, because of the expense, but it produces superior meat.
I treated this very simply as well. I seasoned the meat with salt (lavender salt in my case; Melissa was dubious of this addition) and pepper, and then seared it until it was done (it went a little past the rare state I like). On the side, I served mashed potatoes and green beans with shiitakes. For the sauce, I deglazed the pan with Barbera d'Alba (the rest of which we drank with dinner) and then reduced it a whole bunch, adding in a little butter at the end. The meat was fantastic, bursting with flavor. I think I just found a new meat purveyor. This dinner took longer to make, primarily because of the mashed potatoes.
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| Meat and Potatoes (and green beans and mushrooms) |
The week after, we made a very simple dinner. We had toured Fabrique Délices (a local, artisanal charcutier) the week before, and they were kind of enough to give us all paté to take home. Melissa and I went for the truffled duck liver mousse, perhaps our favorite of their products. Anyway, we had this paté in the refrigerator, and one night we sliced some up and served it with baguette pieces and a simple green salad tossed with a mustard vinaigrette. I took the rest for lunch the next day. Simple but wonderful.
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| We felt very French with this light dinner |
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