Dinner Tonight

I decided to make some roast chicken tonight, one of my favorite go to meals that's incredibly easy yet very satisfying. I decided to make it a little more interesting than usual though. Usually all I do is sprinkle seasonings outside the bird and baste with butter. That makes for a tasty bird, but this time I filled the cavity with a Meyer lemon, part of an onion, several cloves of garlic and a few fresh thyme sprigs.

I then decided to do even more and made an herb butter using buttermilk ranch dressing seasoning from Penzey's spices. I slid generous amounts of that under the skin of the breast and worked it into the meat, followed by slices of prosciutto. I thought that cutting into chicken breast with a slice of Italian ham baked in would be mighty tasty.

I sprinkled some seasonings all over the chicken and then basted with butter throughout the cooking. When it was finished, I pulled all of the items from the cavity and cooked those with the juices from the bird. I added the chicken neck and browned it nicely to add some more chicken flavor and I also threw in a slice of prosciutto for good measure. I was able to develop some nice crusty bits in the pan and after it had reduced down a bit, I deglazed the pan with a bottle of hard cider. I let that reduce down quite a bit, then strained everything out, added the liquid back into the pan and reduced it a bit more. I added a little bit of cream, and a pinch of sugar to balance the tartness of the lemon and arrived at a very tasty sauce. By that time, the chicken had rested enough to carve, so I sliced off half of the chicken, placed it on a plate and added the sauce.

I poured a glass of wine and enjoyed a very tasty dinner. I think the herbed butter and prosciutto is a winning combination. I'll be making this again.

Fun In the Kitchen

I really enjoy cooking with cider. A month or so ago, I brined some pork tenderloins in a mixture with cider as its base and put a couple of them in the freezer surrounded by the brine. A few weeks ago I thawed one out and decided to experiment. I bought a skillet that can go in the oven at that time (the first time I've ever owned one) and so I decided to start out on top of the stove. I put a great dry rub on the pork and then browned it all over in some olive oil. I looked around my kitchen to see what I had that might work well and so I added some sliced red onions and the surprise ingredient: some orange slices.

Once everything was nicely browned, I added the cider brine to the pan and then popped it in the oven for about 20 minutes or so. I then pulled it out, removed the pork and then boiled the remaining liquid down until it was reduced to a thick syrup. I strained out the onions and the orange slices then put the liquid back in the pan. I added some more cider, some cream, some spicy ground mustard, a couple tablespoons of butter, a squeeze of orange juice, a dash of apple brandy and let it simmer until it was nicely thickened. I sliced the tenderloin and poured some sauce over top and was grinning from ear to ear from how tasty it was. I think it's the best improvisation I've ever come up with, and so I tried to recreate it last night. I've decided it's my signature dish. It's got one of those sauces that you want to lick clean. I derive a lot of pleasure from whipping up something tasty from the top of my head like this. It's a good diversion from thinking about a certain woman.

Pork Tenderloin

I really am finding that the one place where I can be happiest these days is in the kitchen, creating something new. It's the one area right now where I can get so caught up in the creative process that I can momentarily forget about everything else. I believe that when we're going through something difficult, hobbies and interests can be a gift to us since they help ameliorate the pain we might be going through without resorting to something that is self-destructive or a historic crutch we've clung to in the past. I suspect that for awhile, the only non-depressing posts in my blog will be related to food, so I'll try to keep a smattering of these throughout my entries.

Because it's fall, I really like cooking with apple cider. I bought some pork tenderloins the other day from Costco and since brining's on my mind, I put them in a brine with about a half gallon apple cider, a half gallon of water, a cup of salt, 1/2 cup of smashed garlic cloves, a bunch of fresh thyme, about a dozen bay leaves and a couple tablespoons of peppercorns. It's a modified recipe I use from Thomas Keller's Bouchon Cookbook.

I popped the pork in the brine before I left for work yesterday and let the brine work it's magic. A brine is much more than marinating. With the large amounts of salt included in a brine, a chemical imbalance is created between the moisture in the meat and the high salinity of the brine liquid. The imbalance forces the salted water into the pores of the meat, bringing with it all the flavor you've introduced into your brine. Given enough time, the flavors will permeate the meat and also make the meat much more moist when it's done cooking. That's why people recommend brining turkeys at Thanksgiving. In this case, six hours was enough time and so when I got home, I fired up the grill and then made a dry rub to put on the pork. I started with some paprika, then added some ancho chili powder, some chipotle powder, a little smoked paprika, a boatload of cracked black pepper, kosher salt, then some dried onion and garlic, a little ground mustard, thyme, dried sage and the surprise ingredient that took it to a different level, and made it very tasty: about a teaspoon of cinnamon. This rub is a keeper and I'm going to try it again and actually come up with measurements so I can have a recipe for it when I need it.

I rubbed that all over the tenderloin, oiled the grill and got it grilling. I saw that it was getting a little more charred than I hoped, so I bopped into the kitchen and mixed up a little quick sauce with apple cider and a lot of spicy ground mustard. I threw a bit of my spice mixture in for good measure, and then added some oil. I started basting the pork with the sauce until it was done.

It was tasty, and one of the easiest meals in the world! This one's a keeper, and it made me happy. When I grin from ear to ear with the first bite, it doesn't matter what cards life deals me--I forget about anything but the food. This is a recipe I'm going to try and recreate sometime, and the addition of the apple cider mustard sauce made it better, so I'm keeping that one. Besides the pork, I fixed a little broccoli to go alongside which made for a happy camper.

I grilled two tenderloins last night which will be dinner for the rest of the week. I had two others that were in the brine. I put them each in a ziploc bag, covered them completely with cider, and placed them in the freezer. I think when I pull them out in about a month or so they're going to be even tastier.