Kitchen For Two

It’s too rare that I work up the courage to do free-form, experimental cooking. If we run out of planned meals and leftovers for the week, I’m much more likely to order takeout Chinese or retreat to some familiar, predictable meal like mac and cheese, than to pull out the random contents of the fridge and make something novel. I don’t like this limitation. A side effect of shopping in modern grocery stores, for specific recipes, is that you inevitably have to buy more of some ingredients than the recipe calls for. The extra half of a zuchinni or the rest of the package of chicken thighs sits there in the fridge until you do something with it. Chicken freezes well, but zuchinni doesn’t. I hate it that many of these perishable bits languish in the fridge until they wilt and turn slimy, fostering colonies of white or green fuzz, maybe with patches of pale orange. It’s shameful, because the only reason it happens is that I’m afraid to risk cooking a bad meal.

Thursday evening, somehow, I got over it. I rummaged around in the fridge and pantry, found some things that seemed to resonate with each other, and made something that was… actually… good. It was even worth writing down. I have no idea what to call it, so I give you…

“The Jon”
(serves 2)

5 thick slices of pork tenderloin (three for me, two for her)
1.5T butter
Vegetable oil
1 medium-sized leek, cut into 1″ pieces and washed
A handful of raisins
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 shitake mushrooms, sliced
Orange juice
3/4C stock
1/2C couscous

Film a skillet with oil and heat it on high for a couple of minutes. Generously salt and pepper the pork tenderloin slices. Brown them on both sides, but leave them a bit pink in the middle. Set aside on a warm plate and cover with foil.

Lower heat to medium. Melt the butter in the skillet, and add a glug of oil. Saute the leek for a few minutes, until it begins to soften. Add the garlic, raisins and mushrooms and cook a few more minutes.

Turn up the heat, add a couple of glugs of OJ, and cook until the juice is almost completely evaporated. Add stock and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, stir in couscous and cover. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Fluff couscous mixture with a fork. Divide between two plates, consolidating it into a thick, flattish pile in the middle of each. Place pork on top. Serve immediately.

I’m so proud.

Chicken and Pinto Bean Chili, from Fine Cooking

Thai Tofu and Green Bean Red Curry from Recipezaar

Donna Deane’s Pork Chops with Fresh Tomato Sauce from The Wednesday Chef
Indian Chicken with Coconut Milk from Fine Cooking

Charles Phan’s Rice Noodles with Chicken from The Wednesday Chef

Terrific Tofu Burgers, a Moosewood recipe from Recipezaar. This recipe is new to us, and will make leftovers for lunches (apparently you can freeze tofu burgers).
Chicken, Garlic and Soy Stew, a Mark Bittman recipe from the New York Times. This is a “greatest hit” for us, and we like it so much it may be the greatest hit.

A simple grilled pizza recipe from Mark Bittman - we’ve made this before and liked its variations; I’m a pizza fan, so I love being able to have it at home. Two Mark Bittmans in one week - are we falling into a rut?

Easy Asian Beef and Noodles from Cooking Light*. This is easy and tasty - you can’t go wrong with beef and noodles. This has almost reached “greatest hit” status, but I think I like it more than Jon does. If you can’t access that recipe, there’s a PDF here.

The mussels from last week - we don’t have week-old mussels sitting around, we just didn’t get around to making this. Tonight it is.

*I have a love-hate relationship with Cooking Light which boils down to 1. I think their recipes are weirdly complex and rely on expensive, hard-to-find ingredients. 2. Half of the magazine is beauty tips or travel suggestions. When I use their website and can skip the magazine, I’m so much happier - it’s almost worth the price of the subscription (Accidentally, I have a subscription that won’t expire for two more years, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about whether or not I like the magazine). Fine Cooking consistently delivers better results, or should I say they deliver better results consistently.

Though I once read Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” and was entranced by its images of Summer being bottled and retrieved months later, never before have I actually done that thing where you get lots of something fresh and ripe and save it for less bountiful times. Today, I’ve finally broken through. A local fruit farm has perfect peaches for $10.50 a peck, and I couldn’t walk away. I found some basic fruit freezing instructions and got to work.

A peck of peaches, I now know, yields about 5 quarts of peach chunks for freezing, plus another quart that you just stick in the fridge and devour over the course of the following hour or so. The only other stuff you need to do this is two cups of sugar, a couple of lemons, five (six if you’re disciplined) quart ziploc bags, a paring knife and a few pots and bowls. ‘Tis the season — don’t miss your chance!

Mussels with Tomato Broth, from Epicurious (Gourmet, January 2005) - this is a repeat that we liked very much; I think this is the third time we’ve made it and it’s a great summer dish.

Thai Braised Beef with Coconut and Ginger, from Cooking Light - this qualifies as an All-Time Greatest Hit - we first made it at least three years ago and is one of Jon’s favorite comfort foods; the coconut milk and egg noodles with soft carrots are dynamite. [if you cannot access this link, click here for a PDF]

Chinese Chicken Salad, from Fine Cooking - This is a new recipe, courtesy of Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s Splendid Table weekly newsletter. I love The Splendid Table, but honestly, some of these recipes are uneven. This one, from Fine Cooking, should be okay.

Stir-fried Beef and Broccoli in Garlic Sauce, from The Best Light Recipe by Cook’s Illustrated - Another Lynne Rosetto Kasper offering; we also subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated, but I’m cleaning out my e-mail box, so these newsletters are getting special attention this week. Another recipe new to us.

Sesame Noodles, from the Golden Pear Cafe Cookbook - The final Splendid Table recipe is a wildcard; we love Sesame Noodles and all things Asian, but I’ve never heard of the Golden Pear or Keith Davis. This recipe is new to us - I hope it’s good!

Me: Oh, those were for the stir fry. Oops.

This Chinese Lamb Stir Fry was one of those recipes chosen to use up stuff left over from other recipes. I think Donna’s inspiration for choosing it was a frozen lamb shoulder chop languishing in our freezer when she did the menu planning last week. There was a lot of bone to deal with, but the meat was surprisingly good.

For the vaguely specified mushroom content we chipped away at a bag of “dried black fungus.” Instead of serving it with “chinese noodles” I cooked some Japanese soma noodles and flavored them with a little salt and sesame oil. Overall a nice, easy dish, forgiving of substitutions, decently flavored if a little pale-looking on the plate. Needs something red…

Well, may as well start with today. Donna and I are engaged in the long, slow simmer of a DIY kitchen remodel. If we were making stock it would be around three in the morning, when you wake up to go to the bathroom and find the house permeated with overwhelming smells of chicken and celery, and know that going back to sleep despite the meaty aromas will be unsettlingly strange. Our house is like that, only the chicken and celery are drywall dust and polyurethane, and the kitchen’s been simmering for well over a year.

I’m obsessing over which faucet to use. It’s largely the fault of ebay and its opportunities to buy obscure luxury goods on the cheap and resell them if they disappoint. I bought a Grohe Eurostyle and installed it when the sink became functional sometime in January, I think. It’s a nice faucet, very clean, very simple and modern. Donna loves it.

But…

It doesn’t have a spray function. After an exhaustive search I landed on the Hamat Ergo. Donna instantly dismissed it. I kept looking at it anyhow. I printed a life-size image of it, cut it out and held it up at our sink, trying to picture the real thing. Donna grabbed the mockup when my back was turned and wrote PrettyUglyFaucets.com across the back.

I bought one anyhow.

“That thing looks like it could eat me,” she said.

I installed it anyhow, this afternoon.

And I have to agree that the Eurostyle looked better in our space. I don’t have to make a final decision just yet, though. That can wait until it’s time to cast the concrete counters this weekend, which gives me three more days to be indecisive.

Middle Eastern Summer Salad with Cucumbers and Tomatoes.

Syrian Beef Kebabs with Cucumber Yogurt Mint Salad from the New York Times.

Chicken and Black Bean Tostadas with Goat Cheese from Epicurious.

Chinese Lamb Stir Fry from CalorieKing