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• 11 Ways to Make Every Meal an Opportunity for a Memorable Experience
  (tags: yay food travel restaurants)

Experimented with my first serious dry spice rub last night, using it to flavour a couple of pork tenderloin that I seared and then roasted. Served up with thyme-pepper roast potatoes and sauted kale, it was a really fantastic meal.

Chocolate-chipotle roast pork

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp unsweeted cocoa powder
• 1 tsp chipotle pepper powder
• 1 tsp regular chili powder
• 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder (optional)
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 2 medium pork tenderloin

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Mix cocoa, chipotle, chili, pepper, and garlic powder. Cut each tenderloin in half (through the width, not lengthwise) then coat liberally with the spice mixture — get as much on there as possible.
3. Heat canola oil in an oven-proof skillet (I always use a cast-iron pan for this sort of thing) over med-high to high heat. When hot, sear the pork for 2 mins per side.
4. Put the skillet in the oven and roast for roughly 10 mins. Remove from oven, put pork on a plate to rest for 10 mins, tented with foil.
5. At this point you can make a quick pan sauce if you like — I did a quick deglazing of the pan with sherry, reducing for a couple of mins, then stirring in a bit of butter at the end.

The kale was dead simple — I just washed, destemmed, and chopped a bunch of kale then set in a covered skillet to steam for 15-20 mins or so with a bit of olive oil, seasoning with salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice when it was done. Today we get leftover pork sandwiches for lunch.

I’ve entirely given up on the del.icio.us autoposter system (again, goddammit), so my random links will be less random from here on in. I’ve been thinking about food again lately (it’s a cyclical thing), and have recently started looking for new food blogs that are worth reading regularly. Here are a couple:

• The Perfect Pantry - Pantry items and things to make with them.
• Smitten Kitchen - No particular theme that I’ve noticed at this point, but well written and photographed and generally fun.
• French Laundry at Home - Extraordinarily ambitious, this blogger is creating at least one dish out of the French Laundry Cookbook every week. Definitely not the sort of cooking I have patience for, but reading about it is fun.

There you go. Later I might talk about the new cookbook I got (recommended by Shona via Stuart), but right now I’m too busy reading it. I wish cookbooks came with electronic versions of the recipes that I could import into my recipe management software so I didn’t have to do all that by hand.

I made this the other night and served over NY strip steaks. Yum.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 medium shallots, rough dice
• 1 1/2 c Cremini (or white) mushrooms, thick slices
• 1 1/2 c Shiitake mushrooms, caps only, thick slices
• 1/2 c beef stock (Knorr stock-in-a-box is fine)
• 1/2 c dry sherry
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure

1. Heat oil in a deep skillet at medium. Saute shallot for 5-7 mins. Add mushrooms, saute for a further 10-15 mins until mushrooms have released most of their moisture.
2. Add beef stock and sherry and turn up to med-high or high and reduce for 5-7 mins or so, or until the sauce has thickened sufficiently. Don’t worry too much about over-boiling it — just leave it on there until it looks like a sauce and not a soup. Stir frequently.
3. Season with salt and pepper, stir in butter until melted. Spoon over steaks.

This would also be pretty awesome with chicken, but I’d use chicken instead of beef stock. Could be good with some fresh chopped tarragon stirred in at the end as well.