Saturday, May 7, 2016 – I’ve already told you the story of the ingredient challenges, so I won’t go into that again. Today, I had my second dinner party with the dishes from the ingredient challenges.
Today’s menu was
And for dessert, blood orange sorbet. (This wasn’t an ingredient challenge, but it was thematic with the rest of the dinner.)
Monday, December 29, 2014 – It’s a tradition now. Twice a year, every year, when I visit my family in California, I cook them dinner.
October was invent a new recipe month. November was random Good Eats episode month. December is… back to inventing a new recipe. Another simple recipe that I can practice getting quick on, and maybe incorporate it into a meal (with the chicken bacon sweet onion stirfry).
Since I made a stirfry last time, I didn’t want to do a stirfry again. But I wanted to do something else that was simple and quick, something that I could do at the same time as the stirfry. So a pan-roasted pork chop with a sauce seemed like a good fit. I wanted to keep the same flavor profiles, so balsamic vinegar and Madeira are in. But I didn’t want a complete repeat, and onions aren’t the best flavor profile for a pork chop sauce, and I wanted to try something with grapes (grapes are really versatile), so I decided to saute some grapes. And of course, adding rosemary and thyme (which are the best and second best herbs, respectively) for a complete flavor profile.
So, without further ado, the recipe, after the cut…