Posts Tagged ‘food’
0So actually… not all of China was bad. In fact, the food was excellent. It is excellent every time I visit China, so I’m not sure why I am still surprised by this. It may be that since our last trip there, I’ve developed a better appreciation for the culinary arts. But in any case, I was very much floored by nearly every meal we ate there. I tried but failed to take pictures of everything we ate there (failed because sometimes people would eat everything before I had a chance to whip out the camera), but here you go: a Picasa album, with pictures individually captioned (click):
On a whim, we bought a 15-lb ham Tuesday night. (This is all that’s left of it.)
For the past 3 days we have been facing the consequences.
I’ve decided to start a series of posts called New Nosh! These will be dedicated to my first-time experiences with new and/or unusual noshables. After all, it’s part of my core food philosophy that one should, over the course of a lifetime, try to put as many new things as possible into one’s mouth*, and always try things at least once before rejecting them.**
* Provided that at least one significant group of humanity can vouch for its deliciousness
** This statement does not apply to foods/eating practices that repel me on a fundamental or moral level, such as live larvae and ortolans. Yeah.
Today I would like to talk about guava. The fresh variety, not the kind that comes in a can or carton, appended with words such as “nectar,” “juice,” “soda,” or “-like artificially flavored substance.” I happened upon a shipment of them at the local H-Mart in Baltimore while home visiting my mother this weekend. At $3.49/lb., they were not cheap, but the aroma didn’t really give me much of a choice.
I’ve made pork tenderloin before many times, but it was always hard to tell when it got done, and whether it would be juicy or a log of shoe leather by the end. I also could never seem to get a nice crust on the outside. So finally I decided to get down to learning how to do it right. The recipe I used tonight came from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, which is a sizable compendium of classic French recipes generously annotated by both Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. The recipe is simply called Sautéed Pork Filet or Tenderloin. It was pretty standard, following your classic “sear, bake, and make sauce” procedure. However this time around I made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. And when I deviated, I noted what went differently, why, and how I fixed it. As a result I think tonight’s pork tenderloin was the best I’ve ever made.
I learned a bunch of things in the process, so I shall write them down here in case you too might find them useful. What follows is my version of the recipe, adopted from and even more thoroughly annotated than J&J’s version (if such a thing were possible).
I love French onion soup in restaurants, the way they come in a little clay bowl all bubbling over with melty cheesy goodness. They can do that because they can stick the whole bowl in a hot oven and let it broil the bejesus out of the cheese. But we can’t, mostly because my mom and Yang teamed up against me to prevent me from purchasing 4 ramekins for $3 at TJ Maxx.
But it’s okay, I’m not bitter. Because I figured out another way to get practically the same delicious result.
